


Behind the Lace Curtains

by Jellyfishhh



Category: Skip Beat!
Genre: Alternate Universe - France, Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/M, Illegal Activities, Unfortunately a lot of suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2019-07-03 00:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellyfishhh/pseuds/Jellyfishhh
Summary: [COMPLETE] On the 19th of August 2016, Kyoko Mogami arrives in the little village of Eugnes with nothing but a suitcase and a story to tell.How did she arrive there? How will she start life anew? And why does the village veterinarian, Ren Tsuruga, seem so familiar?AU - France





	1. Nowhere Fast

# Chapter 1

## Nowhere Fast

On the 19th of August 2016 at exactly 4:37pm, Kyoko Mogami leant her head against the cool glass of the bus window, and looked out upon a landscape that was sickeningly green. The air was thick with dust that danced in the muggy air, highlighted by afternoon sunlight that filtered through thick layers of grime on the windows.

Suddenly she was violently shaken as the empty bus sped over a particularly vicious pothole. She quickly jerked away and began to nurse her bruised forehead, looking up silently to scowl at the bus driver. To her relief, the vehicle seemed to be slowing down. It stopped.

“LA BROSSE!” the old conductor yelled “FINAL DESTINATION EUGNES!”

The doors clanked slowly and noisily open, and a ridiculously tall, imposing man stepped on.

“One ticket to Eugnes please Jaques” he said, smiling politely and depositing a handful of coins.  
“ ‘Course Ren. ‘Ere, take a nice seat a’ the back, I’ll get you ‘ome in a jiffy”  
“Why thank you”

The man named Ren made his way to the row next to Kyoko’s as the doors laboriously worked their way shut again. Then they were off. They hurtled past vineyards and churches at breakneck speed, cutting corners and flying over speed bumps. The landscape blurred as they zoomed over hills and crashed round bends. Kyoko held desperately onto the seat in front of her, tightening her grip until her fingers turned white. _'I feel like throwing up…'_

“Are you okay?” a voice from a few seats away chimed.

The man who had just boarded was smiling amicably and was extending a hand in which was box of pills.

“I have some Dramamine with me if you’re feeling motion sick”  
“Thanks… I mean yes please… I mean, what I mean to say is…” stuttered Kyoko, who was having a hard time stringing sentences together between holding on for dear life and trying not to vomit all over this lovely stranger.

She took the box and after 10 seconds of struggling pushed a pill out of the blister packet. She swallowed it and handed the box back. The man smiled and put it back in a bulging leather bag at his side, before turning back to face her.

“So what brings you to Eugnes?” he inquired.  
“I’m… sorry I’m- “ the motion sickness pills had not quite taken effect yet “I’m going to be caring for Mr & Mrs Berger”  
“So you must be Ms.Mogami. They’ve been talking about you for a few days now. I’m Ren Tsuruga, the local livestock veterinarian, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

_'Figures. No one else goes around in a white lab coat and stethoscope.'_

“Nice to meet you too.” The drugs were kicking in, and none too fast.  
“So why did you come all the way out here?” inquired Ren, who looked suspiciously amused.

Kyoko turned her mind back to the past week. Waves of rage and pain rolled over her, taking complete control. Before she had had any time to put together an intelligent reply, the word had already slipped out of her mouth:

“REVENGE”

Ren’s smile disappeared and his eyes turned cold. There was a moment of dead silence.

“So you’re not here to take care of an old couple out of the goodness of your heart?”

Kyoko didn’t reply. She desperately wanted to deny his words and yet she knew that she didn’t deserve to. An almost tangible, crackling electric tension rose in the air, accompanied by Ren’s million-lumen smile. Aeons seemed to pass before the bus finally came to a halt. There was a painfully long wait as the bus doors worked their way slowly open. Ren made a point of loudly conversing with Jaques and ignoring Kyoko for the entire minute, before briskly stepping off the bus to the cheer “Good day me lad, good day!”. Kyoko stepped off the bus slightly later, having finally extracted her luggage from a rack that she was far too short for.

It was thus that on the 19th of august 2016 at 5:12pm, Kyoko Mogami was greeted by the life that awaited her: a cool breeze ruffled her freshly-dyed orange hair, pushing her through narrow streets and past quaint little cottages. Some distance away, a dog barked and a bicycle bell chimed. The sun was low in the afternoon sky, setting everything aglow with fiery orange. She would almost have been optimistic about her future if she had not realized that the house in front of her was the one in which she was supposed to be working.

It was a crumbling farmhouse covered in ivy. It leaned strangely to one side, and was unnaturally discoloured around the door and windows. There was an enormous window that stuck out from the roof, covered by tattered lace curtains. This gravity-defying house was surrounded by a jungle of wild wheat, weeds and almost impenetrable brambles.

There was a cry from inside:

“EEH BY GUM PIERRE SHE’S ‘ERE! AH TOLD YOU SEW”

An ancient, desiccated woman opened the door and looked down on Kyoko.

“Yew must be Kyoohko then, mustn’t ye? Come on in”

On the 19th of August 2016 at 5:27pm, Kyoko stepped into the light of a crumbling doorway and wondered where life was taking her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is less about actually caring for old folks and living in the country than it is about examining how all of our characters came to live in this small village, and what they're going to do with their lives from now on. So I suppose this is not a chapter, then, but a preface. There are backstories galore in this, so stick around if you want to find out the truth.
> 
> This is also the first chapter of my first fanfiction, so I would greatly appreciate comments or feedback.
> 
> I would like to personally apologise to anyone with a Yorkshire accent.


	2. New Faces

Chapter 2

# New Faces

Over Kyoko’s first few days working as a geriatric care nurse she quickly discovered that it was no walk in the park.

The most immediately noticeable thing about Mrs. Berger was that she was missing one leg. This, it was explained, was because she had been a missionary in the Democratic Republic of Congo in her younger years. She had later relinquished her status as a woman of God and returned to France after losing one leg to a starved leopard.

Whilst no one had explained it to Kyoko, it soon became apparent that she now spent her every waking moment endeavouring to make herself _completely _legless through the means of cheap liquor. This created an almost never-ending supply of work for Kyoko, who was constantly collecting empty bottles from all manner of nooks and crannies around the house. Kyoko didn’t yet know where the nearest recycling point was, and so was forced to stockpile this hoard of glass in a corner of her attic room until she knew what to do with it.__

____

When she was not screaming drunkenly at her husband, Mrs. Berger was nursing a hangover and scheming. Quite what she was scheming was never made clear, but it seemed to involve brambles, a pitchfork and a rather unfortunate feline.

____

By contrast, her husband was a man of few words. Whenever Mr. Berger could avoid talking, he would. He took great relish in making swooping hand gestures and sign language with his great decrepit arms, usually knocking over a nearby object or his wife in the process. During the day he could usually be found mumbling to himself whilst reading classic literature or wandering the house and avoiding his medication. This medication was a source of great insult to his pride, and he would spend great lengths of time widely opening his brown, weepy eyes and frantically gesticulating to make it clear that ‘he didn’t need any’ and that ‘he was strong’.

____

Between the two of them, the Bergers certainly kept Kyoko busy.

____

On The 22nd of August 2016 at 5:00am, the sun had not yet risen. Thus, when Kyoko was awoken by her alarm clock she was forced to scramble madly in the darkness for a minute to find it and switch it off. During this time, she hit her head no less than 4 times on the low-hanging rafters of the place, and tripped over her own suitcase twice. This light morning exercise having been completed, she groped her way to the light switch and illuminated the tiny space.

____

Kyoko had been promised minimum wage and room and board in return for her work, but found that her current living environment fell significantly short of this description. Though the attic was spacious, it was completely bare apart from a small wrought iron framed bed. The 16 year-old had no doubt that the bed was at least twice her age, and that it had not been disturbed until her arrival. The distinct lack of furniture posed little problem to her, though. Her suitcase was now serving as a wardrobe, nightstand and chair in intervals throughout the day, a stroke of genius that she was extremely proud of.

____

_‘I suppose I’ve been pretty spoiled until now’_

____

She buttoned her shirt and walked over to the absurdly large window at the end of the room.

____

_Still, I’ll have a nice view of the fields in the summer’_

____

Once her hair had been appropriately tamed and her apron donned, Kyoko made her way downstairs. She first crept round the living room and library silently picking up empty bottles of assorted alcohols and sweeping away lint and crumbs, and then headed to the kitchen. She set the table for three, and went about frying eggs and making toast with timing so perfect that when her elderly charges sat down to eat everything was still piping hot.

____

Kyoko was contractually obliged eat every meal with her employers, and was just as awkward during these events as she had been when she’d first met them. To her surprise, though, Mrs. Berger suddenly began to speak:

____

“See ‘ere Kyoohko, ye ‘aven’t really wandered the town now ‘have ye?”

____

“No, Mrs. Berger”

____

“Why don’t ye ‘ave a little wander aboot now, eh? Meet the people, git to know the place, all o’ that? ‘Course, you’d ‘ave to tek the bins oot and get the groceries, but that’s all in a day’s work, ay?”

____

“Why thank you ma’am”

____

_‘Why is she being so nice?’_

____

Kyoko leaned over to clear away the butter and caught an almost overwhelming smell of alcohol on Mrs. Berger’s breath.

____

_‘Oh’_

____

She nonetheless acted as if nothing had happened, and walked over to the fridge to put away the jam and butter.

____

_‘_ _I really must check her bedside table one of these days, I’m sure she’s got a bottle of whisky in there… Still, who am I to complain for an opportunity to stretch my legs a bit?’_

____

Breakfast having been cleared away and ancient hermits safely ensconced in their faded floral armchairs, Kyoko stepped out.

____

It was a cool but sunny day, and as Kyoko walked along the dirt road leading to the village square, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit excited. In fact, she was so wrapped up in fantasies about recycling points and quaint food markets that she did not hear the tinny rattle of a small engine coming up fast behind her. In an instant, Kyoko was brought to her senses by the screech of brakes and a loud exclamation:

____

“OY, MATE! I COULD’VE ‘URT MESELF!”

____

A tall, black haired girl was shouting at her from behind the wheel of a milk float. From the back of the vehicle a wiry, bespectacled man made an appearance and began to brush the dust off of his coat. He looked irritably at his driver before voicing his own opinion whilst looking the orange-haired stranger in front of him over:

____

“Kanae… That was a little unnecessary, surely? Shouldn’t we try to clear this up?”

____

The girl named Kanae huffed indignantly and rolled her eyes.

____

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? Now I’ve got places ta be so I’ll be off”

____

_‘What’s your problem? You were the one who nearly ran me over’_

____

With a rev of the milk float’s pathetic engine, the girl was gone. She left behind a cloud of dust and, unknowingly, her wiry passenger.

____

“I do apologise for her behaviour, she can be quite rude around strangers. From the direction you’re coming from, I assume you’re the Berger’s new carer?”

____

“Oh, yes. I’m Kyoko Mogami. Nice to meet you, Mr…?”

____

“Yashiro. Yukihito Yashiro. Please do call me Yukihito.”

____

“So uh, I assume you’re the milkman?”

____

“Oh goodness no!” he chuckled. “I’m the local Vet’s secretary. I organise appointments and such”

____

____

_‘Wait, so that means…’_

____

____

Kyoko’s face fell, but she continued to walk in time with her new acquaintance.

____

_‘At least he seems to be a nice guy… unlike his employer’_

____

She glowered, eliciting a look of concern from her interlocutor.

____

“Ms. Mogami, have I angered you in any way?”

____

“Oh! No, not at all! I just-“ scrambled Kyoko “Have a lot going on right now, you know? Oh, and please call me Kyoko”

____

By this time, the pair had reached the centre of the village.

____

“Well, if you ever need to talk I’ll be at the front desk over there.” Said Yashiro, pointing to a tall shop front labeled ‘Tsuruga Veterinarian’. “Goodbye now!”

____

“Wait!-” Cried Kyoko “Do you know where the recycling point is?”

____

____

_***_

____

____

After spending an uncomfortable half-hour sorting green glass from clear and brown and making numerous trips back and forth from the house with weeks of accumulated garbage, the bin situation was finally taken care of. Now, Kyoko only had to get the groceries and the she would be free.

____

On one of her myriad trips to the recycling point that day, Kyoko had had the good fortune of spotting “Takagi and Sons groceries and butchery”. By retracing her steps, she was quickly able to find her way to this pleasant faux-Tudor _(‘_ _Actually, it could be real Tudor… who knows?’_ _) s_ hop front. The exterior plaster was in excellent condition, and a few well-tended rose bushes were planted near the front door. A pair of red curtains was drawn in the window display, but a small sign nonetheless indicated “Come on in! We’re open!”. Exterior architecture sufficiently ogled, Kyoko took a deep breath and stepped inside.

____

The display curtains did an excellent job of blocking out the sunlight, so the interior of the shop was almost pitch-dark. As Kyoko’s eyes adjusted, she noticed a constant, rhythmic **shing shing shing** coming from the back. It was the sound of a knife being sharpened. Peering at the back, she was able to just about pick out the figure of a tall, willowy figure leaning over. Slowly, carefully, she began to step backwards, one arm reaching behind her for the door. Suddenly the figure turned. It had seen her. Unnaturally glowing eyes saw straight through the darkness and met hers. Kyoko perceived a bloody apron and did what any sensible human being would do in the same situation: she panicked.

____

____

_‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God where’s the door oh god_ _oh g-‘_

____

____

It was walking towards her now, footsteps fast and confident as a leopard. Kyoko was still desperately scrambling for the door handle, trapped.

____

Kyoko had already reassessed her will and was fully prepared to scream for her life when the lights were suddenly switched on. Both she and the person in front of her spent a silent 20 seconds blinking furiously in order to readjust before she was able to really see who it was. Before her stood a lanky beanpole of a person, leaning lazily on a shelf of tinned vegetables. He had messily cut bleached white hair and a superfluity of piercings in his ears. Most noticeably, he had purple eyes.

____

“Hiya there! Sorry if I scared ya, we tend to keep the front lights off on quiet days.”

____

Kyoko must have let her face slip, displaying her terror and confusion, as he then felt the need to explain his accoutrements:

____

“I uh, I’m an apprentice butcher, ya know, so uh, this isn’t what I usually wear”

____

“Oh right, okay. Sorry.”

____

“Nah, it’s okay. Newcomers tend to be a bit spooked by my whole look, so I’m used to it. Speakin’ ‘o which, you must be the girl taking care of the Berger couple. I’ve ‘eard lots about ya. I’m Reino by the way, nice to meet ya”

____

“I’m Kyoko, nice to meet you too”

____

Reino cordially extended a hand to shake, but realised halfway that it was still wearing a bloodied rubber glove. He peeled this off with the speed and accuracy of a practiced hand, and re-offered it. Hands were shaken, and tensions immediately dropped.

____

“Now, ‘ow can I ‘elp you?”

____

“Oh, um, I have-“ said Kyoko, reaching into her back pocket “this list, if that’s okay. Mrs. Berger said to just hand it over”

____

Using his ungloved hand, the shopkeeper took it and looked it over.

____

“Yep, we got all this. Gimme a sec to change outta this stuff and I’ll get it for ya”

____

He pocketed the slip of paper and went to the back. In a few moments, he reappeared minus his serial-killer-like attire and a winning customer service smile. He placed a brown paper package on the counter, and then went about the shop pulling items off of the shelves and then bagging them. Once filled, he brought the bag to the counter where Kyoko was waiting patiently and announced the total which she owed.

____

_‘That’s weird. There’s no way that all of that cost so little’_

____

Reino seemed to have noticed Kyoko’s puzzlement and offered the missing puzzle piece:

____

“I can’t sell you the booze, miss. Yer still a minor.”

____

_‘_ _She’s sneaky, I’ll give her that’_

____

“Well, I’ll take this then please”

____

The transaction was taken care of and polite goodbyes were said. Kyoko headed out into the narrow country roads, pleased that she had made a new acquaintance.

____

_‘_ _I suppose’_ _She pondered, eyes roaming the bucolic landscape,_ _‘That emos aren’t city-exclusive any more’._

____

____

____

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too short, then too long. I hope I'll find the balance soon.
> 
> I wonder who we'll meet next chapter? (Or rather, I know. But you don't, do you?)


	3. Lory's Majestic Employment

# Lory’s Majestic Employment

On the 17th of August 2016 at 6:32pm, Lory Takarada sat at his grimy desk puffing a cigar and reading over his latest client’s credentials.

  
_‘Sure is a strange one’_ he thought, examining the teen sat opposite him _‘And that hair! I do hope she'll brush it, she looks absolutely absurd’_

  
Whether he had any right to make this sartorial judgement was debatable. He had been told multiple times by his friends that he “dressed like a pimp”, “should drop the pink fur collar” and that “that bloody snake scares away my clients”, and yet he could not be swayed. He thought of his clothing choices as a method of separating the malingerers from the truly desperate. His current client, he decided, was the latter.  
He took one long, last puff of the cigar and then put it out in and empty vodka bottle. Blowing out fragrant, dark smoke, he began to speak.

  
“Ms. Mogami”

  
The girl in question jumped. She had probably been watching the snake around his neck eat the cockroaches on the ceiling.

  
“From what I can see, you have an excellent academic record. Why not pursue higher education?”

She looked up into his eyes and Lory noticed almost extraordinary eye-bags. She looked like she hadn’t slept for days. Nonetheless, she opened her eyes wide with defiance, never breaking eye contact as she spoke:

“I can’t”  
“You can’t?”  
“I can’t”

_‘Okay then, have it your way’_

“Well then, why don’t we have a look at your qualifications? I see that you have all six levels of the National catering Institute, 3 distinctions in junior accountancy and can speak 3 languages. You’ve the perfect qualities for working in hotel management, and yet you’re far too young to be taken in by any chain. Your age puts us in a tough spot, Ms. Mogami. I don’t know what I can do.”

“Please”

It came out as a whisper, barely audible through chapped and swollen lips.

**“Please”**

Her voice was thick and heavy, as if she was about to cry.  
Lory was hit by a wave of guilt and paternal instincts. He went into damage-control mode.

“I suppose we’ll see what we can do. I’m sure we’ll find you a good job, don’t you worry.”

He reached into a filing cabinet and began systematically making his way through the papers. The pile of papers he was left with was depressingly small. There were only 3 places that could take her with her lack of higher education, and none of them were particularly well-paying or safe. He pondered for a minute, pensively stroking the anaconda on his shoulders. Suddenly it struck him.

_‘I could send her to the same place as-‘_ he smirked triumphantly _‘Perfect. I’m such a genius’._

Reaching for a drawer that had remained untouched for years, he picked out a thin card and gave it a once over.

“Ms. Mogami” he said, reclaiming her attention from a rat’s nest to her right. “How would you feel about working as a carer? You’ll have room and board and a monthly salary.”  
“I’ll do it”  
“Perfect. There’s no need for an interview, I’ll contact your employers and confirm your travel arrangements.”

_‘She hasn’t even asked to see who she’s working for’_

“When do I start?”  
“Ideally, 3 days from now”

The girl’s face visibly fell.

“I don’t mean to pry, Ms. Mogami, but you don’t have anywhere to stay, do you?”

There was silence, and then Kyoko began to cry. Full, salty tears washed down her flushing face as she began to quietly sob.

_‘This is worse than I thought’_

Lory stepped round his desk and hesitantly wrapped the girl in a warm hug. To his surprise, she didn’t protest, but leaned in as he softly patted her head.

“There there” the older man soothed awkwardly “I’m sure we can find you somewhere to stay for the time being”

On the 17th of August 2016 at 9:43pm, Lory Takarada left his seedy workplace and began ambling down the darkening streets.  
_‘That girl’_ he thought, lighting another cigar, _‘Reminded me of young Kuon’_

*******

On the 23rd of August 2016 at 1:24 am, Kyoko was having a nightmare:  
She was cooking an omelette when she was suddenly engulfed by a green sea. The world became an emptiness of cold water and storm clouds looming ominously above.

“Please!” she cried, the salty water lapping at her arms, “Somebody, help me!”

There was no one there to hear her cries as she was dragged under the waves. Down, down she sank. She sank past ancient shipwrecks and timeless works of art. They cried out to her: “It’s your fault! It’s your fault! It’s your fault” as she helplessly drowned, her surroundings growing ever darker and ever colder.  
Now her feet touched warm, earthy ground. She was in a starlit jungle, listening to the sound of birdsong. A full moon looked down at her, lovingly singing Frank Sinatra as she picked her way past banana palms laden with glittering, pearlescent glass chandeliers. There was the sound of smashing glass and suddenly her arms were running with blood. The stars were raining down on her in fire and fury. Something was chasing after her, and she couldn’t run. A familiar face appeared before her as iron chains coiled around her bleeding body.

  
“Kyoko” it crooned “Kyoko, don’t you love m- “

Kyoko woke up panting. She was sat bolt upright in her bed, glistening with cold sweat.

_‘Why can’t I get rid of him?’_

She curled up into a ball and spent the next three and a half hours trying to get back to sleep.

*******

  
On the 23rd of August 2016 at 7:12am, Odette Berger was getting dressed. She was impatient to eat breakfast and had a few choice words to address to her young housekeeper.  
Upon arrival at the breakfast table, she thirstily gulped down her orange juice, violently set down her glass, and glared at Kyoko.

“You ‘aven’t been goin’ through me room now, ‘ave ye?”  
“If you’re talking about the whisky, port and sherry” said the orange-haired brat, never looking up from the sink “I got rid of it all”  
“WHY YE CHEEKY LITTLE-“  
“We need to talk about your habit, Mrs. Berger” interrupted Kyoko, turning around “It’s unhealthy. You’re draining a great amount of money and you’re never even in a good enough condition to hold a proper conversation. Your husband evidently loves you a great deal and yet you never have a nice word to say to him. Your relationships are crumbling but you can rebuild them. We’re here for you, Mrs. Berger, and we’ll help you get through this”  
From across the table, Pierre looked at pleadingly at her. His hand crossed the table and came to rest on top of hers.  
“Please, Odette”

Faced with such ardent opposition, she had no choice but to say yes.

Later, Kyoko met Mr. Berger in the library.

‘You never told me I would have to speak’ he signed furiously at her ‘that wasn’t part of the deal’  
“It worked out fine in the end though, didn’t it Mr. Berger?” replied Kyoko, smiling forcefully.  
‘Was the bit about me evidently loving her entirely necessary?’  
“Well no, but it really helped emphasise the point”  
‘Just give me back my book’

Kyoko sighed and retrieved the copy of Baudelaire’s “ _The Flowers of Evil_ ” that she had been holding hostage.  
Mr. Berger belligerently snatched it out of her hands and stared daggers at her. He made a point of slowly dragging his thumb across his neck and making gurgling noises. It was the clearest signal he had ever sent.

*******

On the 23rd of August 2016 at 2:53pm, Kyoko had finished emptying the bins, cleaning the house, doing the dishes and hanging the laundry out. She was _free_.

_‘I wonder if I could go and see Reino again today, he seemed a nice guy and he’s around my age’_

She put on her shoes and set out on a walk, intent on relaxing now matter how. It was a hot day and the fields of wheat next to her glowed in the afternoon sunlight as she passed by. She was halfway to the village when a distinctive mop of hair in a vineyard nearby caught her attention.

“Reino!” she shouted, walking over to the field boundary.  
Reino looked up, saw her waving and made his way over, arms full of grapes.  
“Ey up! ‘Ow do?” he called.  
“Fine thanks! Um, should you really be picking someone else’s grapes?”  
“Somebody else’s? These’re ours!” he laughed “Me family owns the land. We own acres and acres of it, all around. I get to pick some grapes now and then, and the harvesting season is starting soon.”  
“Can I help at all?”  
“Well, I’ve already got enough grapes to last me a week, so maybe another time.”

He paused to think for a moment.

“Tell ye what though, why don’t ye come with me and we can tek a walk ‘round all of it. No, even better, I’ll lend ye me dad’s bike and we’ll cycle up to the old windmill. ‘Ow about it?”

  
Kyoko nodded excitedly. She was eager to learn more about the place she now lived and make some new friends. For a moment she was lost in thought, and was then brought back to the present by a shout from Reino further up the road:

“Ye comin’ or not then?”

She ran happily down to him.

_‘Perhaps’_ She thought _‘Things are getting better already’._


	4. Winds of Change

# Winds of Change

On the 23rd of August 2016 at 3:06pm, Kyoko was pushing her bike through the main square of Eugnes when a small poster caught her eye. Using the best of Microsoft Word Wordart, it proclaimed “53rd annual harvest festival! Regional produce market!!! Pantomime!”. Near the bottom, in a smaller font was the line “Help needed! Volunteer today!!!!”.  
Reino noticed her curiosity.

  
“I think Yashiro is running it this year, you can go and sign up later”

  
Kyoko was absolutely thrilled at the thought of working with the community. She wanted to meet new people and learn new skills. Finally, she had a chance to truly fit in. She happily took down the contact details listed and grinned as she pushed her bike onwards.

  
“Me band’ll be playing there too. You should come see us”  
“You play in a band?”  
“Ay, we’re a rock tribute band. I’m the lead singer”

  
Kyoko exclaimed that this was an impressive trait, and they soon lulled into comfortable conversation. Once they had reached the fields, they mounted their bikes and set out on a long and bumpy ride. As they passed different fields of produce, the terrain slowly grew steeper. They reached the entrance of a light forest, climbing the dirt path that had been cleared. Kyoko’s thighs were soon screaming high treason, but the beautiful landscape surrounding her drowned out the pain. She passed a small, bubbling brook and large clearings full of bluebells. Wild deer and rabbits occasionally ran past, the only disturbance to an almost perfect silence.

  
_‘The perfect place for fairies to live...’_

  
As they slowly made their way to the ridge up above, Kyoko let herself become absorbed by her little fantasies. She was only snapped out of them by a cry from Reino up ahead:

  
“We’ve made it!” He shouted over the rushing wind “Tek a look!”

  
They were on top of a clear, flat ridge. Fields and forests sprawled away from them, descending into the valley where Eunges lay. Realistically, they could not have been more than 30 metres high, but Kyoko felt on top of the world. The tall grass at her feet swayed in the whistling wind, inducing the flight of butterflies and multicoloured beetles. She would have been very happy to stay up there, watching over the land whilst the cool air rustled her copper hair, indefinitely. However, she soon began to feel cold. Looking around for Reino, she turned to find his eyes already on her. He picked himself up from the sitting position he had assumed, and suggested that they push their bicycles to the edge of the ridge before returning. As they walked slowly along, his eyes would flicker down to her every so often.

  
“Say, d’ye want me coat? Yer lookin’ a bit chilled”  
“Oh, uh, I couldn’t possibly” she replied, wracked by shivers.

 

Despite her protests, his enormous rain jacket was gracefully removed and placed over her shoulders. It was warm with the heat of previous wear.

  
_‘He’s very observant’_ thought Kyoko as they reached a small, crumbling windmill _‘What a nice guy’_

  
The windmill sat on the edge of the ridge, overlooking the valley. Its four great blades creaked round at an even pace in the wind, providing a subtle and harmonious melody at the background of her thoughts. It was painted in pastel blue, matching the autumn sky above them and setting off the patches of yellow dandelions that grew around it.

  
“Ey, could ye please ‘old me bike fer a sec?” asked Reino, who had begun fumbling in his pockets.

  
Kyoko obliged and relieved him of the metal frame. She watched interestedly and he turned all of his pockets inside out in an attempt to find some small item.

  
“Blast! I’ve fergotten’t keys!” He exclaimed after a thorough search “We’ll ‘ave to go in another time”  
“That’s okay” Kyoko interjected hastily “It’s nice just watching it go round like this. I’ve had a great time already”

  
Reino grinned, revealing a set of sharp, white teeth.

  
“We’d better be gettin’ back anyway. You’ve got yer employers to tek care of, ‘aven’t ye?”

  
She nodded to agree, and they soon found the path down. There was no need to pedal down the slopes, and she let herself freewheel comfortably down. Fields and trees rushed past, blurring as she gained speed. She felt as though she was flying. It felt as though she had barely blinked before somehow arriving at the vineyard where they had started. Already, she was greatly disappointed that it was over.

  
“I can tek the bikes back if ye want, yer house bein’ in the wrong direction an’ all”  
“Oh no, let me come with you. I have business in town anyway”

*******

  
On the 23rd of August 2016 at 4:12pm, Kyoko walked back through Eugnes alone. She walked calmly and thoughtfully, slowly building up the confidence she needed to carry out what she planned to do. She took a deep breath, then walked to the front of ‘Tsuruga Veterinarian’ and pushed the door open. Once she had stepped in, she was relieved to find a familiar brunet sitting at the front desk and looking up inquisitively.

  
“Hello, Kyoko. What do you need? I wasn’t aware that the Bergers had any pets.”  
“Oh, no, this isn’t about an appointment. I just… wanted to help out with the harvest festival…” She awkwardly pushed the words out one by one, feeling how unnatural they sounded as soon as they came out of her mouth.

  
Yukihito’s face lit up.

  
“Oh really! Gosh, that’s just great!”

  
His enthusiasm was simply heartwarming. For all his 25 years of age, he didn’t look a day over 6. He typed happily at the laptop in front of him for a few seconds, and then briefly scanned an excel spreadsheet.

  
“Would you mind terribly if you worked in the pantomime? We’re under-staffed for older actors”  
“Of course, I’d be delighted to.”

  
Suddenly, his expression changed. He fixed her with a serious stare and looked directly into her eyes, as if scrutinizing her very soul.

  
“You’re taking this seriously, I hope? There will be a script to learn and weekly practices. We can’t afford to take on any slackers”

  
Strangely enough, this formidable pressure only seemed to uplift Kyoko. She had never felt so confident in a decision, so sure of what she was going to do.

  
“Yes, you can trust me Mr. Yashiro.”

  
The man in question had reverted back to beaming happily. He seemed positively delighted.

  
“Excellent. Practice is every Thursday at 2 in the town hall. A script will be provided on your first session, I’m sure I’ll see you there”  
“I look forward to working with you”  
“Oh, and could you please jot down your phone number and email just here? We need to be able to contact you in case of any tactical emergencies”

  
Kyoko’s eyes set themselves on the floor as a deep blush set in on her cheeks.

  
“Um, about that… The Bergers don’t actually have any signal or internet, and my phone doesn’t support email.”  
“Ah. That will prove quite the issue.” Came the swift reply. He continued, glossing smoothly over her embarrassment: “I suppose they must have a landline? Why don’t you write that down for now until a more concrete plan is in place?”

  
Still crimson, Kyoko complied.

 

_‘I bet no one else has this issue. I’m already making such a nuisance of myself’_

  
The secretary opposite her noticed her discomfort, and offered some reassurance:

  
“It’s okay, you can’t help it. There’s no need to be embarrassed, I’m quite the same with technology, look-" he said, raising his hands above his head “I have to wear rubber gloves when using any kind of electronic device, or I’ll kill it immediately. Mr. Tsuruga’s equipment suffers terribly when I have to transport it”

  
She seemed moderately heartened by this, and offered a spirited chuckle.

  
“That really is quite bizarre. It’s almost supernatural!”

Kyoko looked at her watch and realised that it was getting late.

“Um, I really do need to go now. I’ll see you on Thursday, then. Goodbye!”

“Wait!” interrupted Yukihito “If you ever need to use the internet, you’re welcome to come here! You can check your email on the surgery computer.”

Kyoko smiled appreciatively as she opened the door.

“Thanks, Yukihito”

*******

  
On the 23rd of August 2016 at 7:43pm, Odette Berger was halfway through dinner.  
Though she was not necessarily more kind-hearted than she had been before having quite drinking, she was certainly twice as spirited and talkative. It was because of this complication that her husband and caretaker were currently being subjected to a constant barrage of conversation.

“-and anuther thing, pierre-“ she continued, momentum building “If I’m goin’ teh do this ‘ole quittin’ drinkin’ malarkey then you ken jolly well remember to tek yer pills. One day yer goin’ teh lose yer marbles one way or anuther, ye might’s well slow down the process whilst yer at it.”  
‘But I don’t need them!’ Her husband signaled frantically, putting down his cutlery ‘I’m fine without them!’  
“No yer not. You’re leanin’ on poor old Kyoohko wherever ye go now, yer balance is so off. We’ll both end up missing one leg if yer not careful”  
‘Now you look here-‘ signed her husband, masticating noisily ‘Just because-‘

  
By this time, Kyoko had decided to go into mediator mode before wholesale war broke out.

“Aren’t you excited about the upcoming festival?” She exclaimed, deftly changing the subject.  
“Ah yes, I’ve been meaning to talk about that” said Mrs. Berger, taking the bait with enthusiasm. “I’d like you to tek us to t’festival this year dearie, I ‘aven’t been in so long”  
“That’s perfect, Mrs. Berger, because I’ve just volunteered for the pantomime”  
“The pantomime, eh? That reminds me of a time when…”

She had been reminded of some trivial anecdote, and spent the rest of the evening dramatically relating it to her captive audience.

  
*******

  
On the 10th of July, 2016 school had been out in France for four days. For two days, “Sing Summer” by Sho Fuwa had dominated the charts, captivating a teen audience with its lively, upbeat tune and soulful lyrics.  
It was this song that Kyoko was listening to when a knock came at her door. She walked over to see who it was, and then suddenly threw it open in delight.

  
“Sho!”  
“Hey”  
“What on earth are you doing here? The other guests could have seen you in the corridor!”  
“It’s fine, Kyoko. No one is still in their hotel room this late in the day. Anyway-” he said, sweeping his blonde hair to one side and walking in, “I won’t be long. I just… wanted to invite you to the beach. You know, to sorta celebrate my first hit?”

  
Kyoko’s cheeks immediately and violently became a deep crimson. She tucked a strand of black hair behind her ears.

  
“M-me?”  
“Uh, yeah, you. Idiot. Why d’you think I’m asking?”  
“But I don’t have a swimsuit, a-and we’d have to take the train”  
“Pshhhhh. I’ve already taken care of all that”

He lifted up a small black shopping bag and threw it into her hands.

“It’s totally your thing”

He grinned and grabbed her by the wrist. Then, running and laughing, he dragged her out of the pale hotel corridors and into the glaring sunlight.

*******

  
On the 23rd of August 2016, at 10:43pm, Kyoko yawned, stretched her arms and switched off the lights. She tripped over her suitcase one last time, then found her way to bed and sank into a heavy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shallow dive into the past. The fragments might appear slowly, but soon they'll all be there.  
> This is going to take a lot longer than expected, I'm afraid.  
> The Yorkshire accent has been replaced with a mishmash of country accents. Sorry, Yorshire folk.


	5. Sink or Swim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I'm going to have to put a warning at the beginning of this chapter because someone dies. The death scene is not particularly long or gory, but I have been told that trigger warnings are to be used anyway. Please, consider yourself warned.

# Sink or Swim

On August the 25th at 2:03pm Kyoko Mogami was sat in the corner of Eugnes’ pathetic excuse for a town hall. She had been handed a script and was now duly reading over it in order to grasp the main plot points. This was not difficult, at the entire pantomime revolved around two harvest angels expelling a naughty demon who had been terrorising local villagers. It had evidently been adapted for a younger audience, with several “It’s behind you!” moments and a few bizarre references to Frozen. All in all, Kyoko felt prepared to play the mysterious ‘Angel 2’.

Suddenly there was a long, high-pitched whining noise followed by a few deep crackles.

“Excuse me!”

Yashiro had somehow obtained a loudspeaker and was now gleefully taking command.

“Now that we’re all here, I suggest some focus group work. Angels, you can use the back room. Demons, villagers, stay with me, we need to block the musical numbers. I expect you all to have learned your lines by next week, when we’ll be doing a run-through. At ease!”

Small groups of actors slowly drifted to their respective locations, leaving Kyoko to walk to the back room. She was accompanied by a slender, towering girl with raven hair and an air of cool beauty. That this cool beauty had nearly run Kyoko over with a milk float less than a week ago was of little importance at the moment, however, as Koyko was currently struggling to open the back room door.

“ ‘Ere, you ‘ave to sorta lift it then slide-” said the black-haired girl, leaning over and opening it with an almost humiliating ease.

They stepped into a small, dusty room and an extremely awkward silence.

“Look-” she started again, “I’m sorry I shouted at you the other day, I was a bit pressed for time. Let’s just work together and get this done. I’m Kanae.”

Kanae tentatively extended a hand into the grubby air, where it was met by Kyoko’s. A truce was made and scripts taken out.

Over the next few hours, a collection of folding chairs and dusty farm equipment watched the progress of the teens with silent eyes. In the little space that they had, surrounded as they were by clutter and ancient tat, they created the illusion of a fantasy world in which winter never came and fairies reigned supreme.

By the time that the sun had set and it was time to go home, they were quite sorry to see each other leave. After Yashiro’s final pep talk, they were thrust into the cold evening air and left to find their ways home.

“ Hey, d’you wanna lift? I usually take Yukihito with me ‘s well, bein’ as we’re in the same area.”

“Oh, yes please” responded Kyoko, rubbing her arms in a vain attempt to keep herself warm.

There was a moment of silence and then Yukihito Yashiro seemed to appear from thin air.

“ABOUT that, ladies- ” he chimed in, scaring the living daylights from the two of them simultaneously “I have just a little more work to do at the surgery, so would you mind waiting for me to finish up?”

“ ‘S fine... ‘S long ‘s we get ‘ome on time is all”                                                                         

_‘Is she... blushing? Is that a blush? She’s definitely blushing-’_ Kyoko smirked ‘ _Yukihito, you lucky sod’_

*******

On the 10th of July, 2016 at 2:15pm, Kyoko Mogami was at the beach. More specifically, she was at the beach with one Sho Fuwa, who was currently helping her construct a sand castle.

They sat under the hot sun, scraping the burning sand into a heap and laughing every time one of them slipped. Occasionally a large wave would sweep the base away, dragging a few seashells with it and soaking the two of them. Curled up in hysterics on the wet sand, time seemed to stand still for our young heroine.

“Say, Kyoko-” Sho suddenly piped in between wheezes of laughter “Are we gonna swim or not?”

“Of course! I mean, only if you want to...”

The blond youth stole a sideways glance at her.

“Kyoko, are you okay? Your cheeks are a little red, you might be sunburnt or somethi-”

“No! No. I’m fine. Really. Let’s swim!”

They pulled themselves up and surveyed the sea in front of them.

“It’s a bit wavy but I’m sure we’ll be fine”

“I’m sure you’re right”

He plunged head-first into the cold, salty water and began to swim further out. Kyoko followed him at a slower pace, taking her time and observing the marine life swimming around her.

 A red fish caught her eye and she dived down to take a better look at it. She came face to face with it, floating amongst the algae, and found that it was beautiful. It flashed its pearlescent scales at her and focused its deep red eyes on hers. For a moment their gazes connected. What was it that she saw in its ruby eyes? Kindness? Intelligence? Apprehension? Daring?

_Turn back, girl._ It seemed to say _You don’t belong here, leave my domain in peace._

There was something ethereal and prophetic about it, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint...

‘ _Who am I to psychoanalyse a fish?’_

By this point Kyoko was running out of air. She swam up to the surface, sweeping back her black hair as she reached the surface and taking a fresh, clean gasp-

Of seawater.

An enormous roller had sucked her in, trapping her under its crest. She span and tumbled, lungs screaming for air, as she was pushed into the sand of the sea bed. Her eyes burnt with saltwater and sand. She could taste blood. Far above her, the surface shone almost maniacally, daring her to find her way back up. Immobile and compressed, there was nothing that she could do but silently panic.

‘ _Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh g-’_

Smoothly, as if the world had stopped spinning, a thin arm wrapped around her waist. She felt herself being dragged upwards, ever upwards, for what seemed to be an eternity until she finally found air. She was laid on the sand.

“Kyoko?! Oh my God-” She heard Sho’s voice crack “Kyoko? Are you okay? Kyoko!”

She coughed violently, hacking up sand and sea water. She sat, gasping and surrounded by strangers, and silently thanked some benevolent god for her life.

She was carefully pulled into a warm hug and let herself lean against his chest. It had been a long time since they were this close.

 

*******

On the 25th of August, 2016 at 5:17pm, Kyoko Mogami was waiting in _Tsuruga Veterinarian_ for Yukihito to finish his chores. She had just grown bored of reading charity pamphlets in the waiting area when she was hit by a brainwave.

“Um, Yukihito, do you think I could check my emails now?”

The man in question leaned his head into the doorway at the back.

“Of course! Please use the grey one to the left”

She duly headed over and booted up the ancient piece of technology. She stood still and waited with anticipation for her email to load. After no inconsiderable delay, the email window opened and she noticed two new messages.

The first was from Lory Takarada:

‘Dear Ms.Mogami-’ it read ‘I trust that you are doing well in your new environment. Your salary will be paid directly into your account on the 29th of every month. If there are any complications, please do notify me’

‘P.s. I’m visiting some friends for the harvest festival next month. I expect to see you there’

She filed this under the newly created ‘work’ folder and looked at her other message.

She grinned. It was from Sally.

‘Heya Kyoko! (ᗒᗨᗕ)(ᗒᗨᗕ) How ya been?

Hope you’re doin’ okay. Good news! I just got a pay rise! *｡(･∀･)ﾟ*｡

I’ve attached the pictures of your last night with us below ↓↓

Please reply soon ~~~’

She was just about to type out a quick reply when the tinny revving of the milk float engine was heard outside and Yukihito came out of the back room with a small briefcase.

“Shall we go then? I bet Kanae is getting impatient.”

She hastily shut down the computer and followed her friends into a beautiful sunset evening.

 

*******

On the 11th of September 2001 at exactly 8:44am, Saena Mogami had reached the peak of her career. Nothing had been able to hold her back, not even the racist antics of the American border control staff. French? Japanese? Single mother? Who cared? She was here on top of the world now, and she’d be damned if petty bureaucrats were going to stop her.

She took a sip of her lukewarm coffee and contemplated the view before her. The Hudson stretched below , glistening coldly in the morning air. Everything was so small from here, so inferior, so insignificant. Down at ground level the common people had already begun to stir, filling the streets with madly rushing bodies. Why did they move so fast? They meant nothing. They led meaningless, unimportant lives. _She_ had clawed her way to the top of the civil law world. _She_ had beaten betrayal and a penniless childhood. Nothing else mattered. From now on, Sanae Mogami was the only name that mattered to her.

‘ _WTC, huh? I could get used to this.’_ her smile turned into a frown and her mouth twitched ‘ _If only he could see me now, so much further than he’ll ever go.’_

Saena Mogami was a busy woman. So busy, in fact, that when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, enveloping her office in a cloud of fire and showering her with millions of hardware shards, she did not even spare a single thought for her infant daughter back in France. She lived thinking herself above everyone else, and died proving that death was impartial to all.

On the 11th of September 2001 at exactly 8:47am, Saena Mogami was 29 years old. Kyoko Mogami was not even one.

 

*******

 

On the 10th of July, 2016 at 8:16pm, Kyoko Mogami was sitting on a pier and eating ice cream next to Europe’s rising superstar. The sun was just beginning to set, casting a fiery glow over the roaring ocean and disconcertingly highlighting the mosquitoes that whined around them. They were still in their swimwear, crackling with the sound dry salty skin as a coastal breeze whipped by. One of the stronger gusts threw her salty, tangled hair whirling around them and pushed some of the ebony locks into Sho’s face.

He grimaced and spat put a mouthful of hair, then chuckled and looked down at his small companion. She did look lovely in that one-piece, but he was worried that she would soon feel cold. This was not his only worry.

“Kyoko”

She stopped swinging her legs and craned to look up at him.

“Today, when you…”

He hesitated, seeing the look upon her face.

“When you… were gone. I was worried. I was so- _worried._ And I- Well, I- It was my fault and I- I should have paid more attention. I’m so sorry Kyoko, I’m so sorry”

She looked silently up at him. The setting sun seemed to have dyed her round face cherry red. She studied him quietly, then slowly, calmly leaned on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Shotarou. I’m just glad that you were there.”

She was still leaning on him by the time that she had finished her ice cream.

 

On the 10th of July, 2016 at 11:47pm Kyoko Mogami was drying her hair back in her room at the Fuwa Hotel in Paris. Sho was reclined on her couch, watching her with interest.

“I love your hair” He feigned a look of disinterest, studying his nails “It’s so long and black and dramatic. You look like a princess or something.”

“Y-you think?” came the reply over the noise of the hairdryer.

“Yeah. Don’t ever mess it up by chopping and dyeing it like me.”

Kyoko switched off the apparatus and put it down. Looking shyly at the wall, she avoided looking directly at him.

“I promise”

 

*******

On the 25th of August 2016 at 10:23pm, Ren Tsuruga returned from a hard day’s work. He had been treating several flocks for severe wasp stings, after a local farmer had discovered a nest in a tree on their pasture ground. He put his case in the small operating room at the back of the shop, and stretched. He was almost giddy with happiness as he loaded the surgery computer to type up the day’s report. Finally! He could retire to his apartment above the clinic and unwind. He desperately needed a break and a chance to change out of his kit that smelled of sheep.

On the 25th of August 2016 at 10:26pm, Ren Tsuruga was expecting to open the computer to an excel spreadsheet of recent work and payment. He was therefore rather surprised when he was instead presented with an open inbox and an email from a prostitute named Sally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted Kanae to have cockney, inner-city accent. I know that this doesn't make any sense given her geographical location, but it's an endearing quality, is it not?
> 
> Who'd like to guess how Kyoko met Sally? 
> 
> MMMMMmmmm, I smell a fresh brew of intrigue on the boil.


	6. Hair Too Long

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to put another warning on this one, for violence. Consider yourself warned.

Hair Too Long

On the 22nd of September, 2016 at 4:32pm, the last pantomime practice had just ended. Next week, they would relocate to Tronsanges (the nearest big town) and perform in front of an actual audience for the harvest festival. The preparations were all complete. All, that is, apart from the costumes. It was this subject that Kanae and Kyoko were currently discussing.

“I mean, we’re angels right? Surely that calls for a white dress?”

“I know, Kyokes, I know. But ‘ere in the boonies the harvest angels always wear floral patterns. It’s tradition, innit?” 

“But _why_?”

“I dunno... coz they’re, like harvest and foresty ‘n stuff I guess?”

“So they’re more... hippie”

“Yea, that’s it. Anyway, I’m wearin’ one of my gran’s old dresses. It’s that sort of thing.”

“A vintage look?”

“Yea, sorta... fifties. I’m gonna curl my ‘air ‘s well”

“Hmmmmmm”

“Wassa matter? Ain’t got nuffin to wear?”

“That is, in essence, my problem”

“Well if you ain’t got it sorted by tonight, I’m sure I can ‘elp you out somehow, kay?”

She waved a quick goodbye and began swirling the keys to the milk float around her finger as she walked off with Yashiro. Kyoko, too, waved goodbye and began to make her way home. The air was beginning to be rather fresh, so she assumed a brisk pace as she mulled over her accoutrement dilemma. She did, _technically_ , have something floral to wear, but it was neither fondly thought of or appropriate.

She decided to talk with her employers about it over dinner.

*******

On the 25th of August at 10:27pm, Ren Tsuruga was poking his nose into somebody else’s business. He did so with concerning ease and grace, as if digging through other people’s inboxes was the most natural thing in the world. He found three pictures attached to the original chain from Sally and, without hesitation or time to consider the ethics of what he was about to do, opened them.

The first picture was of Kyoko leaning over a sink, surrounded by women in various states of undress. Once-white tiles and dirty bathroom stalls surrounded the group, reflecting the light strangely and illuminating everything from beneath. In the darkness silhouettes appeared to be wearing fluffy bathrobes and ill-fitting lingerie. There were shouting, dancing with joy and anticipation. Perhaps it was because the dirty white porcelain of the sink was now dripping with high contrast orange . Perhaps it was because all of the colour in the picture seemed to drip from the young girl’s hair, staining her clothes and dyeing her surroundings a radioactive, contagious bright hue. Perhaps, though, it was because of the locks of black hair that were lying on the grubby floor. They hinted at some past life, sheared off and replaced. **Drip, drip, drip.** Streams of glowing apricot framed the girl’s crying face in a mirror. Was this a moment of victory, or of defeat?

The second photo was more formal, more staged. Kyoko sat, hair now dry and outrageously neon, encircled by women who smiled and stood proud. Several of them had their hands on her shoulders, or were ruffling her luminescent locks. The teen was the only one who wasn’t heavily made-up or styled, and so stuck out like a sore thumb. She blushed furiously, ensconced between two women wearing corsets, and looked up at the camera. This was no girly sleepover. Instead, Kyoko seemed more like the embarrassed daughter of several rowdy mothers. Red, glossy lips were all parted in a heartfelt shout. What were they screaming? Why?

The third and final picture was taken in near darkness. A woman (he assumed that it was Sally) was taking a selfie in the dark. The harsh light of the screen made the leather sofa she was seated on glow, illuminating a head of hair on her lap. There lay Kyoko, fast asleep and mane practically glowing in the dark. It was a moment of youthful escape, a moment of “caught you!” or “tag, you’re it!”. Despite the copious amount of Sally’s cleavage on display, there was a sense of brilliant purity to it. The white artificial glow bathed everything in shades of innocence, turning hair into halo and skin into snow. It was a hastily made renaissance, a flat-pack rebirth. Were second chances going cheap at the dollar store?

Ren frowned. There was more to little miss revenge than he had thought.

*******

On the 22nd of September 2016, at 7:42pm, Kyoko Mogami was dishing out lentil stew to two elderly human raisins.  The food radiated warmth and the smell of tomatoes and carrots, perfuming the room with a distinct scent of home. She finally served herself and sat down. The meal began.

“Ohh Kyoohko dear, this is joohst lovely. You reeely are such a good cook.”

Mr. Berger nodded his shyly head by just a few degrees.

“Thank you Mrs. Berger. Now, there was a problem that I’d like to consult you about.”

Teary eyes lit up from behind a cave of fleshy wrinkles.

“Ooh, what’ll ye be needin’ ?”

“Well-” she put down her spoon “For the harvest festival, I’ll need a floral dress to play the angel. Only, I haven’t really anything floral to wear. Could I perhaps have something of yours to wear?”

“I doohn’t know, dearie. I never reeely went in for flowery dresses meself, so I don’t think I own anything like that.”

“Oh. “

Whilst Kyoko and Odette had hit a bit of a road block, Pierre seemed to be in an Archimedian moment of pure “Eureka!” ecstasy. He hastily put down his cutlery and began madly moving his two hands forward, in a horizontal, juddering way.

“Machine gun…?”

“… battering ram? Are you suggesting we shoplift?”

They had already smoothly transitioned into a game of frantic charades.

‘No! No!’ he signaled, waggling his finger. He then began the regular, shaking forwards movement again.

“Uh…  measurin’ with a ruler! Playing marbles! Dropped yer book under t’sofa?”

“Is it some sort of machine? Hand-operated or something.”

He nodded vigorously.

“Oh! Oh! I got it! Sewing machine!”

Mr. Berger grinned a smug, cat-like smile and looked over at his wife.

“Oh, he’s suggestin’ we make the dress ourselves. He’s an awful good tailor, is my ‘usband. Could make a potato sack the clothes of the gods.”

Mr. Berger shuffled a bit and then slowly began to speak in hushed, muffled tones:

“I’ve dressed Francoise Hardy and France Gall! Jane Birkin would consider no one else! I am Pierre ‘old magic hands’ Berger, and there is nothing that I cannot sew.”

There was silence as his two interlocutors looked at him with amazement and respect. He had not talked for 12 days. The silence grew long. Long enough that Mr. Berger became quite embarrassed of his confident outburst, and retreated back to his shell. He resumed noisily slurping his lentils.

“What a wonderful idea, Pierre! We’ll start planning right efter supper. I suppose ye’ll have to match with t’other angel?”

“Yes, a sort of vintage look…”

“Ooh, my Pierre is a dab hand at that, joohst you weit and see.”

Dinner was hastily consumed and put away, and then a strategic council was set up in the front room. From the very back of the tallest cupboard, Mr. Berger speedily excavated an old singer sewing machine and a pair of thin wire glasses with lenses so thick that they perched precariously out of their frames. He smoothly put on the spectacles and set up the machine on the coffee table. Once he had moved the stacks of old books out of the way, he looked contented and began to speak in a hushed voice:

“Kyoko dear, could you please go and get me all of the coloured bed sheets from upstairs”

“Now now, deer, ye can’t be suggestin’ that we-”

“Odette, we haven’t had guests in years.”

The matter was settled and Kyoko rushed upstairs to get the material. She found, at the back of a cupboard with peeling paint, a pile of thin bed sheets in various shades of seventies orange and brown. When she returned to her elderly charges with them, she thought for a second that she had stumbled across two completely different people. Mr. Berger was not only talking animatedly, he was talking animatedly _to his wife_. Kyoko had never seen this before. Across the table several initial sketched were already strewn, waiting to be given the go ahead or modified.

“Look ‘ere Kyoohko, doohn’t ye prefer design number three? Why on earth would ye-”

“Now now dear, let her decide herself. Kyoko, which design is your favourite?”

She was handed the stack of rough sketches and began leafing through them. They all centered around an A-line fifties skirt, using warm autumnal colours that were suspiciously similar to the bedding she had just collected. Finally, she decided on design number seven – it was a classic halter neck dress that used several layers of gently varying cloth, creating a gradient from the bodice to the bottom of the skirt.

“See Odette, the girl has fine taste. Of course she wouldn’t go for number three.”

“I only wanted to sev ye the labour. Ye knoow this one will take the longest and we’ve only a week.”

“Yes, about that-” he turned to Kyoko, his blue eyes twinkling from the back of a nest of wrinkles “Do you have some sort of patterned vest or – what is it that the youth call them these days – ah, bodysuit? That would greatly reduce the amount of time we’d need to spend faffing with a fitted bodice.”

“Well-” began Kyoko. She really didn’t want to say yes but she also didn’t want to waste her employers’ time. But she had to decide quickly. And so, without room for hesitation, she finally replied “Yes, I’ll fetch it now”.

 

On the 22nd of September 2016 at 8:17pm, Kyoko opened her suitcase. She sat, staring at the article she had been looking for, and sighed. She was almost repulsed by this piece, disgusted and ashamed of all that it represented. Why had she even taken it with her? What in God’s name had compelled her to hang on to this shard of the past, to cling so foolishly to what she had once had? She should have burned it, or trashed it, or even burned _him_ along with it. She suppressed a shiver and sat, zoning out, for a long time. She was only awakened from her uneasy trance by a cry of “Kyoohko?!” from downstairs. As she creaked down to the ground floor, she wondered if she was making the right decision.

 

*******

On the 7th of July, 1962, Odette Armand was 16 years old. She had spent all of her life as an orphan in a small convent just outside Karushe, and it seemed, too, that she would spend all of her teenage life there as well.

“Don’t get too complacent” the Abbess would say “Just because the crisis hasn’t reached here doesn’t mean it’s not happening. I can feel it in my knees, I tell you, the wildlife is growing restless. The forests are noisier by the day. God is trying to tell us something. Do you feel it? Do you feel it?”

Odette did not feel it. She did not much care for this whole ‘God’ malarkey, and preferred to spend her time skiving from her chores and taking long walks. She would wander by the edge of the forests, listening to the birdsong and monkey chatter and feel alive. Sometimes, when she was completely sure that no one was around, she would even remove her wimple and bask her hair in the sticky, overheating air. These little indulgences and acts of rebellion were her _raison d’être_ , she could not stand the strict formalities of convent life, and wished dreadfully that something interesting would occur and inject adventure into her life.

 

On the 7th of July 1962 at 2:48pm, one of these interesting events happened to occur. Odette was sat on the edge of the forest, deftly removing her head dress when it was caught in a gust of wind. The white fabric blew into the dense trees, highlighted against its dark green setting. It wasn’t that far away. Surely, she could step just a _little_ further in, just to recover her wimple? And wouldn’t her punishment be terribly heavy if she returned without it? Why, she could be kicked out! There was nothing to it, she had to go on.

She shuffled tentatively into the lighter scrub, keeping an eye on her caught hat. It remained motionless, stuck on the wait-a-bit thorn, just out of reach as she maneuvered through the harsh undergrowth. Suddenly there was a crushing force on her back and she was thrown down to the ground. She had barely the time to realize what was happening to her when a sudden and sharp pain materialized in her right leg. Two deep fangs had punctured it, splintering bone and mangling flesh. Odette was delirious with pain. She couldn’t move, couldn’t resist as her ankle was slowly and agonisingly chewed, flesh separating from bone with a sickening, wet snap. She screamed. The birds and monkeys fled the treetops, leaving her even more alone with this calculating beast. It methodically stripped her leg to the bone, ignoring her screams and pressing her into the dry earth.

Then there was a gunshot. The leopard looked up and tensed, ready to leap. And then it was gone. It melted into the tall brown undergrowth, slinking away without a second thought. Two second later a game warden and his assistant appeared. Odette was already unconscious.

The next twelve hours of her life were spent asleep. She was taken to the convent, and then to the town, and then to the hospital. By the time she had reached the latter, she had lost a lot of blood. Her wounds were also beginning to turn gangrenous with the heat and leftover germs of her attacker’s teeth. There was only one choice left: amputate.

When she woke up, she found herself missing one leg and lucky to survive. She also found herself excluded from the convent.

“I’m sorry dear-” said the Abbess, evidently not sorry “but we can’t afford to keep on someone who can’t work. And, well, the implications of your missing wimple are far too great to ignore. I’m afraid you’ll have to be sent to the continent.”

And, just like that, she was put on a boat to Europe. Fresh out of hospital and still weak, she was thrown onto a rough sea with a month’s bad weather ahead of her. During this month she relied heavily on a crutch to move around, and found herself unable to go on deck or move around when the waves were particularly bad. Still, she thought, new life was awaiting her. She could finally see the exotic “Europe” that she had been told about, eat pastries in the morning and visit art galleries whenever she liked.

She was thoroughly disappointed when she arrived in France. It was the age of rebellion, the nightclub, and the miniskirt. Parisians were the palest people she had ever seen, and the most outrageous too. Girls smoked and styled their hair outrageously, boys drove drunk and flirted with anything living within a square mile of them. But Odette often felt the eyes of others on her back as she clunked down the street. Miniskirts showed far more leg than she was comfortable with, and drew attention her cheap plastic prosthesis. She felt behind with the times, alienated from the other girls her age. No matter how hard she tried, the French way of life remained a mystery, taunting her and always out of reach.

That was, of course, until she met one Pierre Berger at a nightclub. In the colourfully flashing lights and the deafening music, their eyes met across the dance floor. She looked into the sparkling blue eyes of this shy young Frank Sinatra lookalike, and decided ,finally, that perhaps she would embark on an adventure.

 

*******

Over the week leading up to the 2016 harvest festival, the Berger household became and almost unrecognizable hive of activity. Mr. Berger spent every moment that he could in the front room, working away at his sewing machine and occasionally calling Kyoko over for measurements. If one had walked past the house every day, a mannequin would be noticed through the front windows. On the first day, the only thing on this mannequin would be a white halter neck swimsuit, bearing banana leaves in a display of opulent simplicity. On the second day, a red pannier skirt could be observed, on the third, an orange skirt. This progress continued with each passing day, the stand slowly becoming better dressed and occupying more space.

Mr. Berger only hesitated in his work once. This was on the 23rd of September at 11:32am. He had picked up the swimsuit he was working with as a base and caught a black label in the corner of his eye. This, he was surprised to find, bore the marking “D & G 2016 SS”. He frowned with newfound respect for the garment for a few moments, and then proceeded to cut it anyway. It was none of his business.

That it was none of his business didn’t stop him, however, looking over at Kyoko a little longer than usual with a distracted air every so often, or, for that matter, from wondering how she had ended up where she was today.

 

*******

On the 29th of September, 2016, the Eugnes/Tronsanges harvest festival kicked off with a bang. The proceedings went rather different than expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is a real banger, lemme tell ya. It's hard to think of something that DOESN'T happen in chapter 7.   
> This series will probably be around 12 chapters long, in case you were wondering.


	7. Leaves Just Turning

Leaves Just Turning

On the 29th of September 2016 at 5:14am, Kyoko Mogami was washing her hair. Warm water sloshed unevenly out of an ancient showerhead, periodically stopping altogether for a few moments before a low hissing noise could be heard and the water pressure returned to normal. Presently, egg-reinforced conditioner was being rinsed out of auburn locks. Foam and froth carried an orange tint with it as it swirled down the plughole, fading her hair as gently and unnoticeably as it had done for the last month. Ten minutes later when Kyoko was dry and dressed, her hair was a warm brown that was almost comfortable to look at.

Then her work began. Firstly, her costume was stripped from the mannequin and carefully placed in a carrier bag. Secondly, packed lunches were made and packed away along with three waterproof coats and one waterproof prosthesis cover. The weatherman had warned of heavy rain towards the end of the day, with flooding anticipated in low-lying areas (such as Eugnes), and Kyoko didn’t want to take any chances. If Mrs. Berger’s leg began to rust because of a spell in the rain, she’d have hell to pay. Thirdly, she scoured the house retrieving all of the pieces of Mrs. Berger’s collapsible wheelchair and went about putting it together. This was no easy feat, given that the smallest pieces were often in the least predictable places. Two wheels were found with the gardening equipment, seven screws inside a (rather impressive) fine china ornamental tea set, and the screwdriver was in a mug underneath the front room’s coffee table. And then there was constructing it! The instruction manual was not only hard to follow and without any helpful images, it was almost entirely in Russian.

‘ _у вас должно быть восемнадцать винтов? I couldn’t pronounce it even held at gunpoint’_

In the end, a rather concerning amount of guesswork went into assembling something that _looked_ quite a lot like a wheelchair, but fell unfortunately short on _being_ one. Kyoko looked at her magnum opus and felt rather off-put. Mrs. Berger was only able to walk for a few hours each day, and would need to be pushed around by mid-afternoon. Would she really be okay in this scaffold-on-wheels?

Finally, Kyoko prepared her own bag. She put in her phone, a snack, and most importantly, her first earnings. Tronsanges had a pharmacy and several bargain basements that she wanted to visit: she was running low on toiletries, and was woefully dispossessed of any warm winter garb.

At 7:03 the Berger couple descended the stairs and breakfast began. They were unusually sprightly in the mornings in a way that so many old people are, accustomed to waking with dawn and starting the day with a strong cup of herbal tea.

“Sooh then, are we reddy?”

“I believe we are, Mrs. Berger. We’re taking a ride with Mr. Yashiro in the vet’s van in an hour, so you have plenty of time to ablute.”

“Why d’we ‘ave to get a lift? Is it the people-trolley?”

Kyoko nearly choked on her toast.

“The _what?”_

“The wheelchair dear, the wheelchair. EEhnyweh, it’s very good of ye to ‘ave arranged all this with ‘im beforehand.”

“She’s a smart lass, Odette. You, on the other hand, said that exact last sentence twice yesterday” added Pierre, pointing a fork accusingly.

Mr. Berger was now actively participating in a majority of conversations, even if his contributions were usually small interjections or snide jabs at his wife.

In fact, the couple seemed to be two almost completely different people to the ones Kyoko had first met. Odette, now properly sober and always with her (admittedly few) wits about her, was almost unrecognisable. She would spend a long time every day bantering back and forth with her young carer, rambling on about her wild adventures in the swinging sixties and her passionate hatred for cats of any kind. Instead of work, the teen now regarded her time with the two as amusing and almost fun. All of this breakfast table merriment left Kyoko in high spirits for the day ahead.

More precisely, she was in high spirits about the day ahead until exactly 7:58am when the white veterinarian’s van pulled up in front of the collapsing house. Out stepped a tall man in a white coat, with a handsome (albeit slightly terrifying) smile, a man who was definitely not Yukihito Yashiro.

“Good morning Ms. Mogami-” Ren Tsuruga robotically intoned “Are we ready to go?”

“Aye, we will be as soon as me ‘usband finds ‘is glasses” quipped Mrs. Berger, who had appeared out of the front door with an alarming amount of speed for one who perpetually limps.

Eventually, the spectacles were found and the wheelchair and bags packed into the boot. Odette insisted on staying in the back, and so her frustrated partner agreed to keep her company. Kyoko would very much have like to join the mummified lovebirds at the back of the van, but was knowingly denied permission by two waggling right index fingers and the statement “Ooh, but it isn’t sef! Ye wouln’y ‘ave a seatbelt and we canny ‘ave our employee endangering ‘erself now can we?”.

So Kyoko sat uncomfortably in the front, sitting in silence as the driving man’s smile became increasingly caustic. She swore that if she only had some Thymol Blue to hand, she could have proven that her companion’s smile had reached pH 0.

After a few winding hills of silence, the smile dropped and he began to speak.

“So then, how is your revenge coming along?”

Kyoko was struck by how deep and mellow his voice was. He sounded as if he should have been singing opera rather than chauffeuring two geriatrics and an adolescent to the back end of beyond.

She was also struck by how effectively his question had stabbed her in the heart. Thousands of angry expletives were already on her tongue, ready to be unleashed, just at the reminder of why she was here. She was alone, abandoned and betrayed in the middle of nowhere, and it was because of _him_. He had used her, humiliated her, _hurt_ her, and yet she was the one facing the consequences. _Damn_ him, damn him and his stupid blonde hai-

The black stormcloud above her head was only dissipated by the realization that they had reached Trsonsanges’ main square. Embarrassed, the teen quickly got up and helped her elderly charges out of the back, and by doing so deftly avoided answering the question. As the trio walked to the town hall, she whipped her brunette head around quickly to face the towering figure that was Ren Tsuruga.

“Thank you for driving us!”

“No-” he smiled back, with a blinding force that actually hurt to look at “It was my pleasure.”

A short walk later Kyoko found herself in the festival hall. Several tables and chairs had been set up, facing a stage at the back. At these tables were small congregations of the elderly. They made a surprising amount of noise for people so old, chattering and gossiping away as arthritic, spindly hands placed cards on dusty tables.

“Garde contre le chien!”

“Taken”

She looked over at her two companions and was surprised to find that they both looked quite nervous. She was confused for a few seconds before finding the root of the problem.

_‘Oh! They haven’t met anyone since the alcohol and non-verbal problems…’_

She couldn’t have that! She was a carer after all, surely she should help her charges find their place in a social setting too? It would be a crying shame if they had both overcome their issues only to be alienated by their peers… Well, there was no time like the present!

Confidently, Kyoko walked over to one of the more sparsely occupied tables.

“Excuse me” she said politely to an old lady with only 3 teeth left and even less hair “Do you think that there would be space for two more players next round?”

“Certainly” came the reply. Or rather, that’s what the reply would have been if any words could be distinguished coming from the owners’ desiccated gums. Instead, the reply was something akin to “Cr’nly”.

“Excellent. Thank you very much.” She bowed her head slightly and went away, returning later with her two recalcitrant employers. They had an anxious air about them, and were doing as much as they could to avoid eye contact with any living being.

“Oh, hello Odette! Pierre! I haven’t seen you in a mighty long time!” one woman wearing a floral two-piece skirt suit said, or at least attempted to say. “O, ‘lo ‘dette! Re! ‘avnee seen ye ‘n a migh’ leng tim!” would have been a more accurate transcription of her words.

“It’s good to see you too, Canelle. May we join in next round?”

“’ourse. ‘rab a cheer.”

Two seats were drawn up and the group comfortably settled into a game of tarot. Feeling that her presence was no longer needed, Kyoko slipped away to find Kanae. She was excited for her shopping trip with her friend, but felt slightly uneasy about leaving the Berger couple alone upon catching sight of a maniacal grin on Pierre’s face. What was he planning?

She put her costume back stage and walked to the supermarket where they had agreed to meet. She bought rice (oh! How she’d missed rice!) tea, (an essential for living with ancient artifacts) and refills of toothpaste and shampoo before stumbling upon a familiar raven-haired beauty in the fruit aisle.

“KANAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEE˜˜˜˜˜!”

Shopping bags flew sideways as the unsuspecting victim was hugged to within an inch of her life.

“Kyoko- I can’t – Breathe -”

“Omigosh I’m so sorry! I just saw you and-”

“ ’S fine, ’s fine” snapped the taller girl “just ‘elp me pick out some fruit”

From her peripheral vision Kyoko became dimly aware that they were surrounded by glistening berries.

“Ooh, pineapple. I haven’t had that in a _long_ time”

And it was true- they hardly got any fresh fruit in the village, let alone exotic ones.

“Yeah, I wann’ed some ‘s well but ‘ave you seen the price?”

Kyoko turned over the yellow bundle to find that it cost €6. Ouch.

“Ah! Y’know what? I know someone who can get us a way better deal. C’mon”

She strode quickly out of the automatic doors and through the winding town streets. She stopped on a cobblestone alley that led uphill and was playing host to a street market. Now scanning from side to side, she made her way up until she found a small stall that seemed to be attended by a 4 year-old.

“Hiou! Wassup?!”

“Heya Kanae, how ya been?”

“Fine, fine. Me ‘n my friend Kyoko over here-”she said, tilting her head to motion to the girl next to her “were just wonderin’ if we could get some cheap pineapple”

Hiou chuckled slightly then sighed.

“Ever the cheapskate, huh? I’ll see what I can do for you.”

He leaned down to some crates behind the makeshift counter and dug around for a bit before picking out two particularly large and juicy specimens.

“That’ll be two for three euros”

“Three! You must be ‘avin’ a laugh! Two or nothing!”

“Three. I won’t budge”

“Two fifty!”

“Ugh… fine.”

Change was exchanged for the goods. Kanae handed one of the fruit to her friend, avoiding eye contact and blushing slightly and she begrudgingly stated: “ ‘Ere, consider it a prezzie”

Kyoko melted into a puddle of delighted friendship-induced goo. It was with great difficulty that she was scraped off the pavement and dragged to a bargain basement to peruse the cheap clothes.

Tronsanges’ retail outlets were quite an impressive sight to behold. They were large and incredibly ugly converted hangars with peeling grey paint and customer service worse than a cheap trip to jail. Clothes that were at least 6 years out of trend spewed chaotically out of barrels that seemed to have no central organizing principal. Around these barrels milled armies of middle-aged women, looking for the best deal with a ruthless and unnerving hawk-like fervour.

The two teens spent an hour or so picking out warm winter clothes when they were suddenly interrupted. A familiar voice began to sing from Kanae’s back pocket, igniting rage inside Kyoko.

“If you’re feeling alone, call me up and we can sing summer˜̃˜” came the crooning ringtone.

“Ah, Yukihito-” said the slightly flustered milk delivery girl as she picked up the call “Yes, okay. Yes, we’ll be right over”

When she hung up, she noticed that the girl behind her was shaking slightly. Was it anger or-

“Omigod, Kyokes! Are you a fan of Sho Fuwa as well?”

“Under no circumstances am I-” came a curt reply. Her voice seemed to be dripping with venom.

“What? Why, c’mon, you gotta admit he’s got a great voice! You just need to listen to a few more of his songs is all.”

“I don’t. Want. To listen. To that idiot!”

This aggressive tone scared the bejeesus out of both her interlocutor and the checkout staff, so it was hastily decided that they should drop the subject and make their way swiftly to the town hall so that they could prepare for the pantomime. Once they had arrived , panting, at the stage, they found one Mr. Yashiro beaming with delight and holding a megaphone. Standing next to him was a significantly less enthusiastic Ren Tsuruga.

“Is everyone here? Excellent”

A few crackles and whines interrupted him. Realising his mistake, he dropped the loudspeaker for a few moments to put on a pair of rubber gloves before continuing.

“Listen up everyone! Big news! We’re going to be on television! Franceinfo want to do a section on regional harvest festivals and are going to film the panto. If you’re participating in the festivities you might even be interviewed!”

The cast cheered and a babble grew as excited whispers were exchanged.

“This being said, there are some formalities. Please raise your hand if you wish to be excluded from filming or censored from the video.”

Only one hand was raised. It was that of a tall and imposing figure with black hair standing next to the speaking man.

“Only Ren? Okay then, please go and talk to the production staff. I think that they’re having tea in the café two streets away… Yes, you’ll have time to catch them I’m sure. That’ll be all then, let’s get ready for the real thing in forty minutes time”

The actors separated into male and female groups and went to their respective makeshift changing rooms. The girls chattered and laughed as they changed in the storeroom, helping each other style their hair and complimenting each others’ dresses. Kyoko was doing particularly well with the latter.

“You look like a princess!” her voice practically sparkled, the anger from before having evaporated at the sight of her bff in costume.

“Calm down!” the recipient of the compliments was evidently embarrassed. “It’s just my gran’s old dress”

“But it fits you so well! And the blue fabric really sets off your hair!”

The Kotonami women, it was explained, had always been freakishly tall. Her mother and grandmother had been _even_ taller than she was. So it was no surprise that the dress was the right size.

“And the rose pattern-” the taller girl added “is because my gran’s called Benibara. When she first moved to France from Japan no one could pronounce ‘er name properly, so she just stuck with rose. Red roses for a red rose, eh?”

“What a wonderful story…” Kyoko had, much to her friend’s annoyance, drifted into dreamland again.

“Earth to Kyoko? Hello?”

The brunette snapped back to reality.

“Your dress is lookin’ fine-”

This was an understatement, and Kanae knew it full well. Mr. Berger had put his heart and soul into reinventing the fifties swoosh skirt. Layers of tulle created a warm autumnal gradient from the green and white bodice to the very ends of the skirt. It was a visual representation of the changing of leaves, the coming of autumn. If Pierre had heard the mediocre praise his masterpiece was currently being given, he probably would have cried.

“But like, the shoes… They ain’t it”

This was a valid statement. Kyoko’s green wellies were doing nothing for the outfit as a whole.

“What do you want me to do?” She bristled “It’s going to rain tonight!”

“Could ya like, go barefoot or somethin’? Maybe you should borrow someone’s trainers.”

A small squabble ensued and it was eventually decided that Kyoko would wear a pair of traditional wooden clogs that had been excavated from the storage room cupboard.

At 11:28, Yukihito Yashiro walked onto stage and announced to a crowd of disinterested youngsters that the yearly pantomime was starting. One minute later Kyoko and Kanae walked onto stage and made good on his statement. At the back of the hall, they could see a large camera on a tripod filming them, and at the front was a sea of children expecting to be entertained. There was nothing to it: they had to give it their all. So for an hour and a half the angels and villagers performed choreographed dance numbers and interactive sing-alongs as naughty demons popped in and out of the story. Kyoko was a particularly passionate actress, throwing her all into her character and summoning real tears for the farewell scene. It was no surprise that the audience seemed to perk up every time she went on stage, wondering what would happen next. But as Kanae watched Kyoko perform her solo piece from the wings, she felt something akin to worry. As they were changing she had noticed a constellation of random scabs on her friend’s outer forearms. The small red patches were scattered thinly, but each one was thick enough to indicate that a deep wound had once been there. It was an unnatural place to have such injuries, as the offending accident or attacker would have had to have come from both the left and the right, without affecting the upper body.

 _‘Unless’_ she thought silently ‘ _Unless she had put her arms up…’_

What on earth had happened to her before she’d come to Eugnes?

Once the panto had been wrapped up, Kyoko had half an hour to get changed and find her employers to attend the sheep show. She therefore did have enough time to give a short interview when the film crew asked her for a few words.

A tired-looking woman with bottle blonde hair stood next to her with a microphone and assumed an artificial smile as the camera began to roll.

“So, what’s your name? How long have you lived in the area?”

“My name is Kyoko Mogami and I’ve lived in Eugnes for around a month now.”

“So you moved from the big city? What’s your opinion on cultural get-togethers such as this? How do you find living in the country?”

“Yes, I came from Paris. As someone who moved here, I feel that community moments such as this really helped me to settle in and find my place. Working with the others meant that I got an opportunity to get to know everyone better”

She heard a small noise and noticed that Ren Tsuruga had stopped at the end of the hall. They were blocking the exit and so he was trapped with them until the filming ended. His dark brown eyes were firmly fixed on her as he looked disapprovingly on at her. But Kyoko refused to back down. She stared pointedly back into his eyes, never wavering as she answered the final question.

“When I originally came here, things were pretty different to what I expected. However, changing location and meeting new people gave me the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. I’m no longer here for the original reason I moved. Instead, I’m here to create a new me. The country has allowed me to start over anew.”

“Thank you for your time.” Finished the interviewer, far too haggard to question the mysterious reply she had received.

From the back of the hall, a tall and handsome figure stirred. The vet stalked out of the doorway after a few more seconds of gazing intently at the teen. That morning’s question had finally been answered, and he seemed to like the response.

Later on, Kyoko found Odette and Pierre Berger sitting in the audience of the sheep show. She walked over to a spare seat and asked them how their day had been. Odette took the opportunity to tell her all about her new friend Canelle and the plans that they had already devised for mushroom picking next month. Her husband, though less loud, was twice as gleeful. After furtively looking around himself a few times, he produced a wad of cash from the inside of his coat. So he could play tarot too, huh? She made a mental note never to play him at card games.

Once they had all settled into their seats comfortably, Kyoko had the opportunity to look around a bit. Kanae and Reino had promptly vanished after the panto, so there was no one she recognised around. There was, however, a surprisingly large amount of teenage girls in the audience. From the snippets of their conversations that she could hear, it became apparent that some of them were from out of town. What could possibly have drawn in such a gaggle of teens?

‘ _Wait, it can’t be…’_

Unfortunately for our young heroine, it was. As the sheep presentation began, the human skyscraper and livestock vet that had driven her into town that day stepped into centre stage and began judging each specimen. Unsubtle whispers of “Such a dreamboat omg!” and flirtatious comments floated up from the teenage spectators, making everyone else rather uncomfortable and ruining the formal atmosphere as the competition unfolded. By the time that “Colette from Chataigne Farm” had been announced the winner of the annual ‘Best Sheep Prize’, much of the hormonal audience had left or fallen into hushed conversation about one tv series or another. It was for this reason (amongst others) that Kyoko was extremely grateful for his almost complete disappearance after the awards ceremony.

“Now Kyoohko, I expect ye’ll be wanting to see young Reino’s band perform now won’t ye?”

“Well, yes. But we can go home now if that’s what you want! Don’t let me hold you back!”

“No no deerie, we canny ‘ave ye westin’ yer best years. Do go an see ‘im. Mind, drop us at our daughter’s ples first.”

Kyoko was shocked.

“I- I wasn’t aware that you had a daughter. Um, where does she live?”

“Ach, follow Pierre. He knows the wey.”

As they made their way through the narrow cobbled streets Kyoko was informed about the person she was about to meet. Bernadette (for that was her name, poor thing) was now nearly 40. She worked from home as a financial consultant and had two children: Clotilde and Eglantine (did bad names run in the family?). Her favourite food was pumpkin soup, and she was an excellent cook. All in all, she seemed a hard-working and sweet character.

When Bernadette’s front door swung open, Kyoko felt suddenly unprepared. She had been thrown into the deep end of social interaction. How was one meant to greet their employers’ child? The stern, middle-aged face that looked down at her had completely thrown her off. Should she be polite? Close? How should she introduce herself? How should she-

Her socializing dilemma was quickly solved by Bernadette’s stubborn refusal to talk to her. She would be warm and loving to her parents, but Kyoko might as well not have existed. She didn’t even know why she was surprised when the suggestion was made that the two of them stay over for a few days. And just like that, a pair of house keys was handed to her and she was let off the hook.

As Kyoko methodically traced her way back to the town band stand through a maze of disorganized streets, Kyoko couldn’t help but feel slightly let down. In a matter of seconds, she had become unneeded and redundant. Did anyone need her? Why was she even here? She pulled on a few strands of brown hair and then pinched herself. No! This method of thinking was no good! She was creating a new her, wasn’t she?

“EY KYOKES!”

She was snapped out of her self-pity by a cry from Reino up on the makeshift stage. He was grinning and waving, his band mates around him poised and ready to play. And just as the sun set, the first chord was struck.

It was strange, reflected Kyoko, that someone with a voice as good as his wasted it on hard rock. It flowed like cold water into the night air, clear and smooth as the finest silk. And as night set in, and the light behind the stage became ever more prominent, he seemed to glow ever brighter, smile ever wider. His presence on stage was almost celestial. A gentle breeze whipped his hair up into a halo of staggering white as he looked down, smiling at the small crowd. As Kyoko looked at the small-town emos around her, she noticed that they were singing along with all their hearts. So what if the music was terrible? Reino was bringing happiness to those around him.

At 9:12pm the mini-concert had just ended and Kyoko was chatting with her local butcher as he packed up his equipment.

“Hey! The night’s still young! D’ye wanna come and ‘ang with us?”

“Uh… sure”

On the way to Reino’s van, each of ‘Vie Ghoul’ (Kyoko had to stop herself chortling at the pretentious name) ‘s members was introduced to her. There was Shizuku and Dasuku the guitarists and brothers, Kiyora the keyboard player and Miroku the drummer. Miroku in particular was in high spirits as they slid open the van’s side doors and climbed in.

The interior of the van was lined with old fruit crates that served as seats. An ancient paraffin gas lamp crackled in the center, leaving the corners, inhabited by empty beer bottles and the occasional crisp packet, hidden in darkness. There was a distinct smell of molasses in the darkened space, unfortunately highlighted by the dust hanging in the air. As Kyoko climbed into her seat the floor dipped a bit under her weight and she felt a slight uneasiness. Sitting on the crate nearest the door, she eyed the bottles around her warily. Was this, she asked herself, a good idea?

“I’m gonna give back the storage room keys quick. Be back in a ‘mo” said Reino, vanishing.

So Kyoko was left with a bunch of alternatives she had never met before. As she was sitting nearest the open door, she was subject to the cold night air and the smell of fields. She had just prepared the perfect excuse to leave when the one with the long purple hair (Miroku? Or was it Shizuku? She should have paid more attention during introductions…) piped up.

“Say, Kyokes, was it? Can we offer ye anythin’ to drink? I ‘preciate that things ‘r a little awkward but I think you’ll find we’re really a nice bunch.”

“Oh, yes, um, nice to meet you. Uh, could I please have a soda?”

“Sure!  No wait, even better, lemme mix you a ‘Miroku Special’”

“Is that good?”

“ ‘Course it is! I’m the one makin’ it!”

“Sure, then”

One of the guitarists facepalmed.

“Not this again, Miro’ “

“What?”

The other bandmates looked apologetically at Kyoko and offered an explanation:

“Miroku is incapable of mixing drinks. I swear, I once ended up poisoned!”

“Oh ye did not! You ‘ad the flu!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that-”

They descended into the usual teenage banter and Kyoko felt herself relax. Miroku made a great show of mixing her drink behind his back, but from what she could tell his ‘special’ contained various sodas, some lemonade and a packet of restaurant sugar. Finally, an unnervingly grey and fizzly drink was handed to her with a flourish.

“Madaaaahm” intoned the presenter, imitating a clipped accent and eliciting chuckles from his friends who had already hit the crisps.

“No! Kyokes, don’t do it!”

“Oh shut up you, ah’ve improved since last time. This time I’m keeping it simple. Few drinks, bob’s yer uncle.”

“What’s my uncle gotta do wi’ this?”

“Dasuku you moron it’s a figure of speech”

“You’re the moron here! What if you poison Reino’s new friend?”

“Ahaha, Miroku you’re soooooo dead dude!”

Ignoring the jibes flying through the air around her, Kyoko took a sip of her drink. It was both incredibly sweet and sandpaper dry bitter. It also had a painfully salty aftertaste and a strangely fruity smell. She would have preferred to leave the drink after that, but seeing Miroku’s disappointed face made her feel bad. If it meant making new friends, Kyoko was willing to endure a cup of this strange conction. So Kyoko lifted the polystyrene cup and finished the (now slightly lukewarm) potion in one go. A few strange crystalline granules remained at the bottom of the cup, and Kyoko tentatively scraped a few into her mouth.

“It’s salt” she said, frowning slightly.

Miroku groaned as his entourage descended into hysterics.

“Duuuude that’s gotta be an all time low”

“Ahahaha it literally… aha… ahaha It literally says it on the packet!”

“Did _not_ see that one coming”

There was a bang on the side of the van and Reino leaned his head into the open doorway.

“ ‘Sup? What’ve I missed? What’s got ye spilling yer guts?”

“Miroku gave yer friend ‘is special drink”

Reino froze, then an expression of worry set in on his face.

“Dude, that’s not funny! She can’t drink, she’s a minor!”

“It’s only one drink man, it’s not gonna kill ‘er”

Kyoko sat silently as a heated argument started. She herself was feeling too wiped out to join in. Today had been a surprisingly packed day, and she was beginning to feel absolutely zonked. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a warm bed…

“Kyoko, did you know he was giving you alcohol?”

“No…” she replied groggily. Urgh, she just wanted to go home now.

“Oh for _pete_ ’s sake Miroku” Reino growled. He leaned suddenly forwards and grabbed his friend by the collar, dragging him out of the van into the cold night. “Stop being such a bloody dickhead!”

And with that, a swift and strong punch was delivered to the underneath of the offender’s chin.

“The fuck mate? What d’ye just-”

Reino’s leg came in a speeding arc and connected with his shin. He then let go and watched as the purple head of hair receded into the distance, limping. He had just turned around to say something when he was interrupted by a deep voice to his right. A terrifying, fiery smile loomed down on him and pressed him against the metal door.

“Is Ms. Mogami with you? I’m afraid that it’s time for me to be taking her home”

“Hm?” Kyoko was so tired that it took all of her effort to hoist herself off her seat and down onto dry land.

“Come on, time to go”

Ren Tsuruga sighed deeply as he walked slowly alongside the stumbling teen. She seemed barely conscious, ready to drop onto the pavement at any moment. Why was today’s youth _quite_ so bad at taking care of themselves?

When they arrived at the van, it had just begun to rain. A thin drizzle settled in as the two strapped themselves in and closed the doors. As they got out of town and further into the country roads, the rain began to come down more heavily. The frequency and speed of each falling drop increased with every passing second, eventually becoming deafeningly loud against the vehicle’s roof. To make matters worse, it was now chucking it down so hard that it was impossible to see. Switching on the fog beams, Ren battled the urge to spill expletives in almost every language imaginable. It was going to be a long, slow ride.

Using his vague memory of local geography, he slowly navigated the increasingly bog-like country roads that led home. To his sides, he could see some of the flatter fields flooding. Things were getting dangerous, they shouldn’t stay here too long.

When they eventually reached Eugnes, Ren was faced with a critical decision: should he drive his somnolent passenger to the Berger house or not? It lay further down the hill, where the water would pool after the storm. By the end of the night the road leading there would have become an impassable bog, potentially trapping her in the house alone for a few days. A loud clap of thunder and a fork of lightning that hit the windmill on the hill made him decide in an instant. It was too risky for his liking. No, she would just have to stay with him or that Reino creep for a few days.

He parked and helped his new houseguest out of her seat. She was almost asleep at this point, leaning on him heavily as she walked. This was rather inconvenient when he had to search his pockets for the front door keys. She was exactly by the pocket he needed to get to , so he needed to delicately shift her (now drenched) head out of the way to get to it. Once they were inside the dark surgery, he began removing his muddy shoes and wet coat. He noticed that his companion was not following suit.

“Ms. Mogami?”

“Hmm?”

“I appreciate that the situation might be a tad strange, but I think you might have to stay here for the night”

The teen giggled languidly.

“Strange?” Her eyes were barely open “You must not know-”

She went into as close to hysterics someone as fatigued as her could get.

“You must not know… about that time… that time I nearly became a stripper”

And with that cryptic remark, she fell unceremoniously forwards onto the tiled floor.


	8. Coexist

**Coexist**

  
**A/N: <> indicates that someone is speaking in a language other than French, in this case Japanese.**

  
On the 29th of September 2016 at 11:47pm, Ren Tsuruga was standing in the entrance to his veterinary surgery, mildly shell-shocked.  
He spent twenty very confused seconds attempting to rationalise the inebriated adolescent’s actions before his doctor’s instincts kicked in. She had fallen with some force onto a hard tile floor- she could be concussed!

  
He began to treat the situation with a professionalism that he would be floundering in perplexity and annoyance without. Moving mechanically, he gently picked up the limp teen and checked her pulse. 78bpm, good. Her breathing, too, was normal. He finished removing his own soaking outerwear, and awkwardly began tugging off his sleeping patient’s wellingtons. This took no inconsiderable force, and was rendered twice as hard as it should have been by the wearer’s irritating tendency to flop over just as he had nearly edged the rubbery footwear off her feet. A good struggle later, the brunette teen was successfully unshod and he could start actually entering his apartment.  
He left the unconscious body briefly in the dark waiting room as he climbed the stairs to switch on some lights and unlock his apartment door. Leaving the latter wide open, he descended and returned carrying his new houseguest. This would have been a heart-fluttering sight if not for the fact that he was not carrying her bridal style but in an altogether less romantic fireman’s lift. The thin body was slung haphazardly across his shoulders, droopy feet every so often grazing the banister of the unfortunately narrow stairs. Ren was surprised by the effort it took him to attain the summit that was his living room. Had human beings always weighed this much?  
At exactly 12:04am on the 30th of September, 2016, Ren Tsuruga was faced with a dilemma. In his midnight weariness, he was desperately craving his own bed. However, once he was in it, where would the Mogami girl sleep? He could leave her on the couch, but she would probably be cold in the night with her thin clothing. She was also likely going to sleep for a very long time, given not only her drunken state but her recent head injury. In the morning he would then have to sneak through her improvised bedroom in silence in order to access necessities such as the bathroom and the kitchen. He also supposed that there was the usual etiquette of treating the guest nicely, though in his current state of near-exhaustion he really could not care less.

  
With a quiet sigh of resignation, the human ladder looked over at the conked-out head of copper hair that was leaning on his shoulder and decided that he would have to sacrifice his night of perfect sleep. With a final burst of effort his protesting shoulders carried the dead weight named Kyoko Mogami up the last flight of stairs to his bedroom in the attic. He dropped her inelegantly on the bed and felt himself expand outwards slightly with the new freedom that his torso had gained. Finally! Ren was in a state of near euphoria at the thought of catching 40 winks.

  
He strode confidently out of the room and was about to switch off the lights when he stopped in the doorway. Caught in an immense moment of embarrassment, he stalked begrudgingly over to the windows and closed the curtains. Once again, he began to make his way out before returning to switch off his alarm clock. He was almost convinced that he had finished his duties as an impromptu au pair when he realised that he had missed the most important thing. He returned to the bedside and stood leaning, frozen, over the sleeping girl. His professional mask had slipped, and he suddenly realised the ridiculousness of his own situation.

  
Here he was, tucking a teenager into bed. A teenager who had, not all that long ago, led him on a wild goose chase around Tronsanges for her elderly employers and who had even more recently suddenly announced a past intention to become a stripper. She was concerningly small under him, messy locks strewn haphazardly over the white sheets. One of her hands had already found a section of duvet to curl around, and was loosely gripping it as she breathed calmly in and out, lips slightly parted. Had it not been for the strange circumstances, Ren could almost have found it... sweet.

  
However, the strange circumstances were unfortunately in place, so he was limited to silently yawning instead. He lifted little miss revenge up and the placed her head gently upon the pillow. He tucked her into the duvet and then placed another warm blanket on top for good luck. There were no eye-witnesses around for this scene, but if there were, they would almost certainly have sworn that there was an almost caring look on Ren Tsuruga’s face.

  
He then switched off the lights and quietly edged the door closed behind him. Entering his living room, he stood in the darkness and listened to the sound of not-quite-silence. The rain was still pelting down outside, beating a loud and irregular rhythm on the window sills. Some drops hit harder than others, bouncing off the glass with a small “pop” and flowing down to the puddles forming in the roads below. Others glided with the wind, almost invisible but for their silvery streams. The wind was more regular. It was a pulsing siren call, a conductor of this natural symphony, a graceful dancer at the eye of the storm. It whipped and whirled and roared around the houses of the hamlet, searching, ever searching for new spaces to invade with its infectious song. Thunder rumbled angrily in the near distance, its heavy steel-toed boots dancing the Barynya into the sky. Somewhere a dog howled, bringing Ren back to himself, or, more accurately, himself from a few hours ago.

  
*******

  
At 4:43 on the 29th of September 2016, Ren Tsuruga had escaped his duties as a sheep show judge and was making his way to a small café for a cup of coffee.  
He walked calmly, assuredly. This part of acting came naturally.  
What also came naturally was the sudden halt he came to when a patch of lime green in his peripheral vision caught his eye. A tall man occupied a verdant jacket, accompanied by white suit trousers and a leopard-print shirt. Despite his outrageous dress, he seemed totally in his element, idling on the street corner as if waiting for a taxi that would never come. The walking-talking human fireworks display was none other than one Lory Takarada, who, unfortunately, knew the veterinarian.

  
“Ren my boy! Fancy seeing you here!”  
“I might say the same…”  
“Why such cynicism?-” the older man pouted in a manner most unbecoming of a sexagenarian “Are you not happy to see me?”  
“No, I was simply-” Ren shifted his medical bag from his right hand to his left and adopted a gleaming smile “questioning the purpose of your visit”  
“Ah! Yes! I was hoping you might help me with that…”

  
Wrinkling hands entered a mad scramble to search bright pockets. After a brisk pat-down of the jacket and trousers, a subtle check of his concealed gun holster and a few grunts of annoyance, the man of dubious occupation pulled out a bedazzled flip phone out and began furiously clicking. Two unnecessarily long minutes later, he shoved a blurry screen in Ren’s face. The image was grainy and difficult to make out, but it seemed to be of a girl with orange hair.

  
“Miss Mogami. Know her? I’m trying to get a hold of her to discuss payment transferrals.”  
“Sir-” to say that Ren spluttered would be false, but to say that he almost did could not be disputed “Sir, you don’t mean to say…”

  
The “sir” in question was distracted by the sudden realization that his presence was attracting more attention than was advisable, and dragged his handsome interlocutor to a nearby alley mid-sentence. Once he had scanned the area a few times to ensure that no one was around, he began to speak again.

  
“Ren-”

  
There was silence and he knew that the smile he was presented with was not genuine.

  
“Kuon-”

  
Brown eyes smoldered into his own. He felt sure that they would catch fire any minute, but was unable to offer any water to quench the flame.

  
“Kuon… It’s been four years. I’m an old man now, I cannot earn a living solely guarding you. God knows living off the government radar is hard – hell, you know… Times are hard but perhaps, my son, we must move on.”

  
Ren deflated, but not enough not to retort angrily.

  
“Tell me this… Tell me this-” his words sped up, anger rising “Are she and I the same in your eyes? You think that Rick would be happy if he saw this? What you’ve come to? Scraping the bottom of the barrel whilst-”

  
“Kuon”

  
Without Ren’s realising it, Lory had made his way to the other end of the alley. He was a small silhouette against the light of the entrance. Dark, engulfed by surroundings, he began step away. His words were barely audible, but he smiled as he spoke.

  
“You are safe. I want that girl to be too”

  
And with that, he was gone.

  
*******

  
At 12:34am on the 30th of September 2016, Ren Tsuruga was in the bathroom. His thin face was angled only centimeters away from a dimly lit mirror, the forehead slightly crumpled with concentration. A long thin finger was approaching his right eye. Gently, gently it alighted on the surface and came away carrying a concave disk of brown glass. He blinked two jade eyes. He was ready.  
The lights were switched off, dirty laundry chucked into the basket and curtains closed. He padded to the sofa in total darkness and lay down with a thin blanket, twisting a few times to get into a comfortable position.

  
His eyelids were lead. The darkness beckoned, sleep sang. Refuge, peace, it was so close…

  
Lightning struck someplace not far off. Blinding light illuminated the room and scorched itself into his eyes.

 

_‘Tina’_

 

Sleep did, eventually, come to his troubled mind. But with the calm of sleep came the chaos of dreams. And his dreams were not only chaotic, they were never-ending.

  
A red snake on a field of snow. It coiled forwards, a red tangle on a background of pure, glistening white. It dragged behind it a crack, a crevice, a chasm. Deeper with each serpentine hiss, darker with each winding scale’s progress.  
Squelch. The red snake was now a red puddle spilling into the pristine snow. Blood oozed out and down, dripping into the depths of hell. On top of the mangled corpse was a house on chicken legs. On top of its obsidian turrets sat three elderly women. On top of their shoulders the future weighed heavily. Their eyes glowed blue, stared into his soul. A dying croak.

 

“Master of your fate”

  
Where was he now? An enormous green oak tree saturated his senses. It was everything. The gnarls of the thick trunk were a story book, the smell of eden and a call to arms. Its branches spread out into a canopy of light. It was so big, and he? He was inconceivably small. He was the point of a needle, stuck floating in a duck’s egg. A needle in an egg, an egg in a duck, a duck in a hare, a hare in a goat. And here was the goat now, eating the roots of the World Tree. It looked up into the still air, knowing.

  
“Kashchei. Deathless yet imperfect. What is it that you seek?”

  
A star in blackness. Three. Seven. Pinpricks of light illuminated a forest. In the centre, a clearing. In the clearing a woman: tall and devastatingly beautiful. Her hair cascaded in blonde ribbons past her feet. She was laughing, red lips parted in a cruel sneer.

  
“I will find you”

  
One billion volts of iridescent energy found the path of least resistance. There was a scream as the scene was obliterated into a palette of nothingness.

  
“Murderer!”

On the 30th of September 2016 at 11:43am Ren Tsuruga awoke with a start. It was only twenty minutes later when he had changed and was enjoying a cup of coffee that he remembered that he was not the only one in the house. However, since he had not heard any noise from upstairs, it was fairly safe to assume that his guest was still asleep and that he had a few more hours to himself.

  
When those few hours passed and it was mid-afternoon, he became worried. Could she be unconscious? Was she having breathing difficulties? Really, this girl had simply atrocious self-preservation skills.

  
He climbed the stairs once more and softly opened the door. For a few seconds he stumbled blindly to the windows in the dark before opening the curtains to fill the room with a dim grey light. He could see, now, a figure asleep in the bed. Limbs and blankets were tangled into knots from tossing and turning, but Ms. Mogami did overall seem to be sleeping soundly. He kneeled by the side of the bed and found one of her wrists under the covers. Ignoring the strange scabs peppered across the warm skin, he placed two fingers under her palm and began to count out her pulse. Twenty seconds passed, her pulse seeming fairly constant, and then the teen began to twist slightly.

  
“No, Sho… No, let go.” She mumbled in her sleep.

  
Ren slackened his grip slightly but didn’t let go. He had to wait the next 30 or so seconds to get her bpm. He looked back down at his watch. Just another half-minute…  
Suddenly Ms. Mogami’s pulse spiked dramatically. Her heart was racing out of control. Her breathing was quickening erratically, beads of sweat beginning to form on her forehead.

  
“Please… No” a frown appeared on his patient-cum-houseguest’s youthful face as she began to speak louder “No, I don’t want to!”

  
Suddenly the girl sat bolt upright. She awoke with such alarming speed and vigour that her head connected neatly with the shoulder of the man leaning over her, knocking the shocked doctor to the floor and eliciting pained groans from both parties.  
As Kyoko nursed her aching head she became aware that she was not at home. She cast her eyes about and saw walls painted wine red, a vintage dresser and an old writing desk stacked with neatly organised files.

  
_‘Where- ?’_

  
Before she had finished posing herself the question, someone stood up to the left of her and looked down worriedly.

  
“Ms. Mogami? How are you? Any nausea? Headache?”  
“Mr. Tsuruga?” she was, put plainly, absolutely bewildered “I’m really quite alright. What on earth’s happened?”  
“Ms. Mogami…” she saw a look of concern flash across his face briefly before even seriousness set in “I need to ask you how much of last night you can remember”  
“Uh…”  
“For medical purposes”  
“Okay then… Let’s see, so there was the harvest festival. I went shopping, I was in the pantomime, I watched the sheep show, I dropped the Bergers off, I-” She faltered slightly. What came next? “I think I went somewhere with Reino? I can’t remember much after that, sorry.”

  
The doctor sighed and pinched his nose bridge.

  
“This could be more serious than I had thought. For now, I’m afraid that you’re in a non-negotiable position of having to stay with me.”  
“Um, I don’t mean to be rude but… why?”  
“First of all, last night you had a rather nasty fall and I suspect you may be mildly concussed. Secondly, last night the rain was more vicious than expected. Lower Eugnes is almost submerged and it’s been raining for most of 30 hours straight now. The government broadcast has warned than it’s going to continue for a day or so with storms in between, and that we should avoid leaving shelter at all costs. That, unfortunately means that you’ll be here for a while”  
“Oh”

  
There was an awkward silence. The rain continued to crash down outside.

  
“What time is it?”  
The tall man looked at his watch and announced “3:26pm. Would you like a shower, or something to eat?”  
“Oh, uh, yes please.”  
“Please stay here, I’ll fetch a towel”

  
He disappeared for a minute or so (longer, Kyoko thought, than she expected it to take to find a clean towel) and then reappeared with a bath towel and her new clothes from yesterday’s shopping.

  
_‘Thank god I bought new underwear’_

  
Ten minutes later, after a quick tour of the spacious apartment and the presentation of a spare toothbrush, Kyoko Mogami was in the shower.  
The shower was meticulously clean with constant water pressure and genuinely hot water. It was pure bliss. But after a few minutes, her trance wore off and her mind began to wander. First, she took in her surroundings: they were clean (always a good start) but relatively cramped. The sink was right next to the shower cubicle, every inch of its counter covered with various products arranged in height order. On the very left, there was a bar of soap in an earthenware dish. To its right, a can of shaving foam, to right again a flask of cologne… various toiletries ran all the way to the very edge where a tall bottle of contact lens solution perched precariously.

  
_‘Wow, talk about a neat freak’_

  
His shower gel was Le Petit Marseillais and smelled of lavender, as did his 2-in-1 shampoo.

  
_‘Manly’_

  
As Kyoko switched off the tap a few minutes later and began to wrap herself in a towel, her mind was wandering still, though in another direction.

 

_‘I could have sworn’_ she thought _‘That before he came back his eyes were green’_

  
*******

  
Most of the afternoon was spent reading. Mr. Tsuruga had an extensive library in his living room, his bookshelves reaching up to the ceiling and curling around every wall of the room. He, bibliophile that he seemed to be, wasted no time picking up a knackered copy of “La Nausée” and curling up on the sofa. Kyoko, though, let herself be absorbed by her surroundings. Books of all shapes, sizes and colours nestled together in carefully arranged groups. Bigger, older volumes neighboured new textbooks, philosophical theses bordered fantasy classics. Above a doorframe, she recognized familiar kanji on the spine of a gray book.

  
<“Tsuruga-san, you read can read Japanese?”>  
<“A little”> he replied modestly, putting down his book.  
<“I really like Kirino Natsuo’s work. Have you read “Grotesque” as well?”> she reached up to pick out the old copy of “Out”.  
<“Oh, I never did. Is it as good as her early work?”>  
<“I really enjoyed it. It’s rather dark though.”>  
<“I shall have to buy it sometime.”>

  
He picked up his book again and the conversation petered out. Kyoko didn’t mind, and continued to explore the final bookshelf. There were a few more Japanese novels, and then the ocean of French intelligencia resumed. She had almost decided that her searching was over and that she should just re-read the volume in her hand when a congregation of leather-bound books on the bottom shelf caught her eye.

  
_‘Коще́й Бессме́ртный. I wonder what that means.’_

  
Next to it a volume of “Рассказы о Баба Яге” was accompanied by “Отцы и дети”.

  
“Mr. Tsuruga, you can also read Russian?”

  
He looked up once more from his book. For half a second she thought she saw something akin to panic, and then his poker face returned.

  
“I studied a little in high school. I’ve quite forgotten most of it now.”

  
He enunciated the last syllables aggressively, terminating the exchange abruptly.

  
_‘Remind me not to mention it again’_ thought Kyoko as she receded into a tattered armchair.

  
*******

  
At 7:34pm on the 30th of September 2016, Kyoko Mogami’s stomach rumbled for the third time in the last half hour. Hunger was driving her insane, and she decided that she must speak now or forever hold her silence.

  
“Mr. Tsuruga, do you think we might have supper soon?”  
“Oh, I’m not much of a dinner person. Please do eat without me.”  
“Thank you. Uh, are there any leftovers from lunch or will I need to cook?”  
“I don’t think there are any, sorry. I’m a pretty terrible chef, so I don’t think I’ll be able to help you”  
“So you’re more of a lunch person?”  
“No, not really”  
“A breakfast person?”  
“Well, I don’t have much of an appetite in the mornings.”

  
There was a brief silence as Kyoko turned her head to fix a deadly stare on Ren’s face.

  
“Mr. Tsuruga, what have you eaten today?”

  
Suddenly he began to take an intense interest in his shirt cuffs. Avoiding eye contact, he sheepishly replied:  
“I had a slice of toast for breakfast…”

  
Kyoko, on autopilot, launched into a rant at breakneck speed.  
“Goodness! Mr. Tsuruga I am deeply disappointed in you. You, as a medical professional, should know best of all that a human being needs lots of nutrition and a healthy number of calories to function on a day-to-day basis. Even in developed countries such as this one, many people can suffer night blindness as a result of vitamin A deficiency and that is something I suspect you dearly don’t want to contract given the highly technical nature of your occupation. It really is inexcusable for you to eat poorly, and I insist that you have dinner with me tonight-”

  
Kyoko halted before finishing her sentence as she realized that she, a guest, was lecturing her host and her senior, no less! Oh, the embarrassment…  
Across the room, Ren stared in stunned silence for a few seconds before breaking out into husky chuckles.

  
“If you insist”

  
*******

  
At 7:42pm on the 30th of September 2016, Kyoko Mogami was despairing at the state of her host’s cupboards. In sum total, the man had 5 cans of tinned vegetables, a large slab of pulled beef, a few carrots, a bottle of wine, ketchup, some rather suspicious looking mushrooms and no less than 27 eggs.

  
“Is there a reason-” she began, closing the fridge “that you have quite so many eggs?”  
“Farmers tend to give me them as a thank-you for helping them out. It just seems rude to decline, so I take it all. The same goes for the beef and mushrooms.”

  
The adolescent ran a thin hand through her copper hair and sighed.

  
_‘Really, this man…’_

  
How on earth was she meant to construct anything half-decent to eat when his supplies were in such a state? And, my God, how she was hungry. Was there really nothing-  
If this had been a cheap cartoon, a lightbulb would be visible floating above her warm brown hair. However, it was not the case and instead the sudden jump of “I’ve got it!” resulted in her stubbing her toe, eliciting a snigger from the figure sat at the kitchen table.  
Determination undamaged, she hobbled upstairs and returned with the bag of yesterday’s shopping. She then plonked, with considerable force, a bag of rice, a pineapple, sugar, flour, milk and a few stray chestnuts on the counter. Excavating a frying pan from a low shelf, she turned to Ren.

  
“How about Omurice?”  
“That sounds… lovely”  
“Good. Please begin by cutting up some carrots.”

  
He stood up and walked over to the sink to get a chopping board and a knife, not bothering to retaliate. He was secretly enthused by this whole “team-cooking” fuss.  
So they toiled away together, laughing whenever something went wrong and treating every ingredient as if it was worth its weight in gold. It was a strange crash-course of getting to know each other: Kyoko discovered that Ren could not cube carrots to save his life, and Ren learning that the reason Kyoko could cook so well was that she had once worked in a hotel.

  
“It must have been hard work” he said, concentrating as he edged an omelet onto a plate with a thin wooden spatula.  
“You can say that again! God, I’ll never go back” came the reply as Kyoko squeezed ketchup into a smiley face on top of her own plate. She had just finished an almost perfect circle around the smile when a drop from the edge of the bottle splattered down. Ren, of course, laughed.  
“What?! I’d like to see you do better!”  
“Fine, pass it here.”

  
His smirk soon disappeared as a shaky squiggle of a drawing formed from under his enormous hands. This time, it was Kyoko’s turn to laugh.  
“He’s so ugly, the poor thing!”  
“Hey!”  
“I know, I know! Let’s name him!”  
“How about… Eggbert”

  
Kyoko groaned.  
“That was dreadful”  
“Oh come on, that one was good” Ren needled.

  
They eventually settled down to a hearty, steaming meal and whiled away the time recounting various anecdotes about mutual friends in the village.  
After dinner, they cleaned up and began to plan tomorrow’s meals.

  
“Let’s see… we could use the wine, mushrooms and beef to make bœuf bourguignon, but then we’d have to eat it with rice. With the tinned vegetables and a few boiled eggs I could make something like a salad for lunch, and we could have American pancakes for breakfast with the flour, milk and eggs.”  
“That sounds lovely”

  
Kyoko eyed the ingredients left on the countertop.  
“Mr. Tsuruga, do you like purin or flan at all? We have enough to make chestnut purin for dessert.”  
“No thank you, I’m not really a fan of sweet things.”  
“Oh. That’s a shame.”  
“Please do make it if you’d like Ms. Mogami.”  
“No no! It’s not really my thing either I just- I know how to make it is all.”

  
_‘And only for that bastard’_ she added mentally.

  
Her thoughts lingered on unpleasant memories, dragging her mood down.

  
“Well, I’m feeling quite tired now, so I hope you don’t mind if I retire early”  
“Oh, not at all. You can sleep in the bed again.”  
“Oh no I couldn’t possibly! You’re my senior after all, and I’m only an uninvited guest-”  
Somehow Ren’s warm smile morphed into an artificially glowing one.  
“Ms. Mogami, as a doctor, I think you’d best follow my advice. Please use the bed, doctor’s orders.”

  
Thunder rumbled as a new addition to the constant rain. A storm was coming.  
Wavering a little, Kyoko looked up at her housemate.

  
“Goodnight, Mr. Tsuruga.”  
“Goodnight”

  
*******

  
At 12:43am on the 30th of September 2016, Kyoko Mogami was dreaming again.

  
She danced, gliding round and round, on the caramel top of a wobbling pudding. She closed her eyes, spinning into herself and leaping into the air with a rustle of tulle and dentelle. There, time sang still and she felt a long pair of arms catch her. Arabesque, fourth position, bow. Look up. She began to waltz, pulled round and round by her tall and mysterious partner. His face, so close and yet so far, was just out of reach. From across the circular stage a glace cherry watched with jealous eyes. He was sweet, but not sweet enough. The dance was hers and hers alone. Hers alone, but who was she dancing with?

  
At the same time, a clap of thunder had awoken Ren Tsuruga downstairs. Failing to fall back asleep, he turned his mind over chestnut puddings, emails from prostitutes and failed careers in stripping. One name stuck in his mind.

  
“Sho” he whispered into the darkness.

  
Where had he heard that name before?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, a clue-heavy chapter if ever I saw one!  
> You're lucky to be reading this on ao3, as my ff account isn't working.
> 
> I want to thank kittyangel64 for your kind comment. I almost considered not continuing this series as I felt that ao3 was too classy for my work and that it wasn't the right platform for it. However, your comment really motivated me. It's nice to know that mediocre writers can make it here too.


	9. Raining Men

# Raining Men

# 

On the 30th of October 2016 at 8:23am Kyoko Mogami woke up to the sound of thunder. She yawned softly and rubbed her eyes in the dark before stumbling to her feet, making the perilous journey to the windows in the blackness remarkably unscathed. When she threw open the curtains, they revealed a sorrowful grey sky suffering from a migraine.

She stretched a bit, then grabbed her clothes and a towel and carefully tiptoed down the stairs. The old oak flooring creaked quietly under her weight as she padded down, as if protesting to its early waking. Its rich tone harmonised with the burgundy walls around her.

 _“Why must you wake us?”_ they softly called. _“It is early, and we are old. Let us sleep a little longer.”_

 

Ignoring the symphony of groaning furniture, Kyoko made her way to the living room.

She hoped dreadfully that she wouldn’t wake her host...

 

 She was relieved to find Ren already awake, calmly nestled on the sofa with a copy of _Lord of the Rings_.

 

“Oh. Good morning miss Mogami” he said cheerfully upon noticing her presence.

“Good morning Mr. Tsuruga”

“You had a good night, I trust?”

“Oh, very good thank you. And you?”

 

He stopped stiffly before answering the question. He looked completely worn out.

 

“I had a bit of a rough night myself”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry for disturbing you! I know things would be better if-”

 

Kyoko had to be stopped before she launched into a tirade of apologies.

 

“It’s quite alright miss Mogami, I’ll make some coffee to go with breakfast and everything will be alright”

“Oh. Well, um... Okay, then...”

 

There was something akin to silence for a few moments. All that could be heard was the pelting rain outside.

 

“Would you mind terribly if I had a shower before making breakfast?” scrambled Kyoko. She was positively a beacon of politeness, hotel instincts kicking in.

“Not at all, be my guest”

 

Kyoko already had her hand on the bathroom door when Ren hastily piped up.

“Actually, I think I’ll just get my glasses quickly if you don’t mind”

 

She stepped aside to let him through. As he walked past her and into the door, they were only centimetres apart. Kyoko clutched her things to her chest and looked up as he went. For a half-second she caught a glimpse, beneath his dark circles, of something shining a deep green. Mere instants later she was surprised when he shut the door behind him, and even more surprised when he emerged half a minute afterwards not wearing glasses.

 

“I couldn’t find them...” Ren tamely admitted, before half- smiling and making his way to the kitchen to continue his search.

 

Puzzled, Kyoko stepped into the bathroom.

 

‘ _No, his eyes are definitely brown...’_

 A few minutes later Kyoko had brushed her teeth and was just getting into the shower when something caught her eye. Hidden in the darkness under the sink was a large, flat object that clanked of its own accord. She could see its vague outline crouching beneath the cabinet and, intrigued, decided to take a closer look. Kneeling down, she peered under the low cupboard and into the dusty murk where a forgotten object lay in eternal repose.

One skinny arm disappeared into the dark unknown. She could feel the edges of the object against her fingertips. Her second arm joined the first. They carefully inched the clunky slab from its hiding place, slowly dragging it from the floor.

Blue tin caught the light as it emerged, encased in fluff, into the light. Two panels in strange, long shapes. A dial with miniscule measurements. It was a set of scales.

 

Kyoko stepped tentatively onto the old machine. It rattled as it sank with her weight, needle shaking violently before settling on a final number.

She was surprised to find that she had gained a significant amount of weight since she had last weighed herself (‘ _when was that? Paris?’),_ and doubly surprised to find that she rather liked herself better for it. Her bones no longer poked awkwardly out from under her skin, and she had discovered new curves where before there had been only flat plains. There was simply more of her around. Wonderful!

*******

At 9:07am on the 30th of September 2016, Kyoko Mogami and Ren Tsuruga were eating American pancakes and listening to the crackling morning news through a barrier of static on the radio. After discussing the main headlines, the newscaster disinterestedly began listing the items of the day.

 

“At 5:45 there will be the weekly _Country Eye_ segment. Tune in to hear Celine Arnoult investigate Burgundian harvest festivals. At 6:30-”

 

“Hey, that’s us!” Kyoko interrupted excitedly.

“We’ll have to remember to listen to it. I do hope that the rain lets up before then, so we can hear it properly”

“Oh, I think it was meant to stop sometime this afternoon anyway. I’ll be able to go back to the Bergers’ tonight if all goes well”

“Let’s be careful, in any case-”

 

The very next second, Ren was interrupted by a rumble of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning, followed by the lights giving out.

 

“Must be a power surge. Stay here, I’ll go down to the surgery and trip the breaker”

 

Kyoko watched as he left in the gloom. She distracted herself from the darkness  and lonely silence by clearing away the table. In the stillness the clanking of the plates was amplified tenfold, and she found herself jumping at even the slightest noise. The furniture of the room seems to be watching her, judging her with solemn eyes. When the lights came back on, her mind turned to Ren.

 

He was a strange one, that was for sure. It wasn’t only his quite frankly astonishing stature or disconcertingly steady seriousness; it was the way he flinched every time lightning struck, his bizarre aversion to offering any personal insight in conversations and his... youth.

He was a fully qualified doctor, and yet he was only, what, 20? And if he’d had to study medicine, he must have gone to or come from a big city. So why come to Eugnes? And then there were his language skills... and his eyes...

 

_‘I’m staying with a real weirdo all right’_

The apartment door opened and she returned to her work. She could hear him as he took off his boots and padded back to the kitchen.

 

“Oh, you’ve cleaned as well? Thank you very much” Ren said amicably as he took a drying cloth and began making his way through the drying rack.

“You went to fix the lights, didn’t you? We’re even. Besides, it was the least that I could do given that you’re so kindly taking care of me and I’m just an undeserving-”

“Ms. Mogami-”Ren interjected before her trail of vindications became an uncontrollable downwards spiral “You’re absolutely welcome to stay with me. You have no need to justify your actions.”

 

Kyoko turned an impressive shade of crimson.

“Th- Thank you”

*******

 

Ren spent a lot of the morning downstairs in the surgery rescheduling all of the appointments that he was missing because of the rain. He had smiled, put on three jumpers, and then disappeared out of the doorway, leaving Kyoko quite alone.

 

So she sat, reading a medical journal in the quasi-silence, and let herself forget reality as she waded through complex scientific language and cutting-edge technology. For nearly an hour, she barely moved an inch, transfixed by the ocean of terminology she was slowly drowning in.

 

Then, cutting clearly through the still air, a ringing noise came.

 

Kyoko put down the book and looked around.

 

The sound stopped abruptly.

 

She picked up the book again.

 

The bourdon returned.

 

Slamming down the book in agitation, she leaped to her feet and paced quickly to the source of the noise. It was a white plastic rotary dial phone, placed on top of a pile of books that vibrated slightly with each ebbing blare.

Now faced with the offender who was disturbing the peace, Kyoko was temporarily stumped.

 

What was the protocol for picking up a host’s call? And what about a host you barely knew? Suppose it was a prospective client of his? Would she be upbraided if she lost a money-making opportunity? Or would it be worse if she picked up and messed up the dialogue?

 

 _‘No-’_ Kyoko told herself _‘My customer service is impeccable. Surely I can handle this. Surely I can help Mr. Tsuruga in some way.’_

 

So she took a deep breath, and picked up the receiver.

 

“Ren my boy, it’s Lory!” came the immediate and deafening cry.

 

“Hello Mr. Lory. I’m afraid Mr. Tsuruga is busy right now. Would you like to leave a message?”

 

There was silence for a few seconds.

 

“Miss _Mogami?_ Is that you? What on earth are you up to?”

“Um, who is this? Do we know each other?”

“It’s Mr. Takarada. You know? Of the employment agency... With the snake...”

“OH! I’m terribly sorry for not recognising you! I can’t believe that a lowly person such as myself-”

“That’s QUITE alright.” interrupted Lory. “Only I really do insist on knowing what you’re doing at my protégé’s abode.”

 

Kyoko rattled off a quick explanation of the flooding situation.

 

“I see. Well, when he comes back, tell him that I called.”

“I will, sir.”

“Excellent. Goodbye.”

 

He hung up abruptly and she hooked the phone back into place. Glancing down at her (rather tattered) watch, she noticed that it was time to be thinking about lunch.

 

She wandered into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Whilst the pan heated, she got out a chopping board and began dicing all of the vegetables she could get her hands on.

There was something so soothing and familiar about cutting carrots. Maybe it was their even hardness and the subtle “thunk” of the knife as it hit the board, or maybe it was the simplicity of the action, the somehow universal appeal.

 

Kyoko was so lost in her culinary wonderland that she hardly noticed that Ren had returned until he had gently placed an enormous hand on her shoulder.

 

“Ms. Mogami-”

 

She felt the weight of his palm on her clavicle and flinched, hard. Not thinking, only remembering, her entire body twisted away from the contact in a split second. A shiver of panic and revulsion ran down her spine. Her knees bent and her elbows went flying as her instincts tried their best to directly teleport her away from the scene.

 

Alas, she was only human. Instead of appearing in some other dimension, one wayward arm lashed out and  knocked the boiling liquid from the stovetop. For one glorious, almost beautiful moment, it splayed out in a glistening veil in mid-air, ethereal and ominous, before it crashed down on her host’s arm.

 

“Ow!” cried Ren, calm mask shaken and evidently disoriented. “What the hell!?”

 

Crumpled over the countertop, Kyoko realized what had happened and went into overdrive.

 

“OhmygoshIamSOsorryIreallydidntmeanto-andImeanIwasjustcaughtoffguarditwasn’tyourfaultatall-” she wailed at something close to the speed of sound.

 

Ren  sat still, cradling his arm in shocked silence as she rambled on.

 

Kyoko, still wailing for some form of forgiveness and loudly cursing her own clumsiness, quickly grabbed a wet cloth from the sink and turned to face him.

 

“…pleaseletmehelpyou” she finished.

 

Since Ren remained still, she assumed she had got the go-ahead and began to undo his cuffs.

 

And then Ren came back to reality. With a look of severity that Kyoko had never seen before, he snatched his arm back and glared lasers into her skull.

 

“I will be quite alright on my own thank you.” He growled.

 

Glowering at her, he began to turn away, but Kyoko’s worry had reached such epic proportions that all sense had quite left her, and she would not be cowed by anything as puny as social conventions.

Grabbing him with a force unexpected of one with such a fragile build, she pushed him down into a dining chair, leaning on one of his shoulders and lunging for the afflicted arm. Ignoring how he winced as she grabbed his wrist, she expertly battled open his shirt sleeves and rolled them up past his elbows.

 

The two of them gasped in perfect sync.

 

Ren gasped because his arm was feeling significantly more painful than it had 10 seconds ago, debilitatingly sharp, as if someone was running a knife down the tanned skin.

 

Kyoko gasped because Ren Tsuruga’s sleeves had opened to reveal something entirely unforeseeable. From the carpals upwards, his arm was a black and red mosaic of ink peonies in bloom.

 

The flowers were expertly rendered, rich petals basking in their own glory and glowing with soft dew. Each efflorescence was tightly packed with others, leaving practically no room for the black, scaly background that slithered behind them. Though it played effortlessly across his skin, there was something sinister about the design. She had never seen a _threatening_ garden before.

 

Kyoko slapped the cold, wet towel onto her captive patient’s arm and said nothing. After a few seconds, the human Burj Khalifa shifted his free arm to hold the cloth himself. She relinquished her grip and awkwardly adjusted her t-shirt. The rain could be still be heard outside.

 

Ren twisted his head to look up at the girl leaning over him. He set his burning brown eyes directly on her golden ones, not once blinking as he aggressively and deliberately said:

 

“Look, I know about the whole stripper shebang. So no one hears about this, or else... Understand?”

 

And then something remarkable happened. At 12:23pm on the 30th of October 2016, it stopped raining.

 

*******

On the 30th of October 2016 at 1:02pm, Kyoko Mogami was stood outside the Berger property assessing the damage that had been done. Remarkably, the house was perfectly intact, and there didn’t seem to be any water or dampness inside the house at all.

 She was trying to work out the sealing properties of cheap brickwork when the solution to this enigma hit her. Leaning over a bush of brambles, Kyoko reached out an arm to poke the strange discolouration around one of the windows. It was rubbery and pliant under her touch.

 

_‘Clever.’_

On the 30th of October 2016 at 1:13pm, Kyoko Mogami was making her way back into the village for groceries. She soaked up the petrichor that emanated from the squishy ground, contemplating the glistening puddles that remained in a few cobblestone alleys as she walked the deserted streets. Really, if she were not in fear of losing her current vocation, she would have been positively brimming with joy.

 

She didn’t know why, or how, but Ren Tsuruga had somehow found out about her previous employment attempts. Now all she had to do was make sure he was the only one.

 

Rounding the corner to “Takagi and Sons Groceries and Butchery”, Kyoko was relieved to see that a familiar small sign outside the door proclaimed “Come on in! We’re open!”.  As she pushed the door open, she noticed that once again the shop was in pitch darkness.

Blindly feeling her way forwards to the counter, she slowly became aware that there was someone at the back of the shop.

 

A vague, grey outline was sat, hunched over, and quietly sighing.

 

“Reino?”

 

The figure stood up and slouched over to a light switch. After the temporary blindness induced by the shocking neon overheads, Kyoko saw that the boy facing her was not in a good state.

 

His eyes were red and puffy, his hair disheveled, and his brows could have won an international competitive knitting tournament.

 

“Reino? What’s wrong?”

 

 Kyoko frowned in concern.

 

He sighed, pinched his nose bridge, and then curled in on himself. Covering his face with his hands, he began to quietly sob.

 

“It’s Miroku”

 

Kyoko stepped forwards and wrapped his lanky body in a loose hug. Was she allowed to do this?

 

“What’s-?”

“I just- I just got a call from ‘is mam…  ‘E’s carked it.”

 

Reino began to cry harder, finding refuge in his small companion.

 

“ ‘E drowned on the wey ‘ome. ‘E tripped in a flooded field and drowned. ‘E drowned… ‘E drowned 600 bloody kilometres from the sea…” he sniffed “They reckon it’s ‘coz ‘e was plastered… But I know ‘im. I know ‘im. ‘E wouldn’t do that, would he?”

“Shhhh” Kyoko was feeling a lethal combination of stress, bewilderment and empathy, resulting in panic-improvisation of traditional condolences “It’s okay… You can let it all out”

 “It’s just… The last thing I said to ‘im-” he croaked back “The last- I _HIT_ him. I can’t believe- and I know- I _KNOW_ \- that I ‘ave anger problems but I just-”

 

Kyoko patted him on the back as he cried quietly on her shoulder.

 

“I wish I could’ve been a better friend.” He hiccupped “I wish I could’ve been nicer… I wish…I wish I could’ve treated ‘im nicer. But now- but now ‘e’s GONE.”

 

His faced was crumpled inwards, tears now flowing freely. Kyoko instinctively hugged him tighter. She could feel tremors running under his skin as he began to shake. Under her tightened grip she could feel the rough texture of his cheap shirt, and meanwhile his unkempt hair was beginning to tangle with zippers and collars, white strands invading Kyoko’s senses as she enveloped the soft, shivering wreck. He smelled vaguely of laundry detergent, and in the dim light Kyoko realised that he was far more vulnerable than she could ever have imagined. Warm drops fell on her dry waterproof coat. It was not raining.

 

And then he hugged her back. And they stood, rocking slightly, in the murky shop for a very long time.

 

 

*******

On the 16th of March, 2008, Kyoko Mogami was being disobedient.

 

Yes, Mrs. Fuwa had told her to stay put whilst the “very important guests” were here. Yes, she respected Mrs. Fuwa and was willing to work very hard. No, she would _not_ go to sleep without dinner.

 

Carefully opening the door by just a crack, she scanned the hallway for people. There was no one.

 

She sneaked out of the room, quietly tiptoeing in her squeaky plastic mary-janes past each door. The red carpeting of the long corridor muffled her light footsteps as she padded slowly, her young face reflecting and refracting a million times in the crystalline chandeliers that clinked peacefully above her, to the stairwell.

 

Suddenly there were voices. A door opened to her right. Two bald men in suits strutted out, arguing vehemently with each other in heavy foreign accents.

“He’s far too young, you should know that!”

“Then why’d you bloody take ‘im along?”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

 

Kyoko dashed down the stairs in the blink of an eye. Her heart was racing, adrenaline up. She remembered now why she never wandered the hotel alone, why she had to cling to Sho so desperately. She remembered why she always listened to what Mrs. Fuwa said.

 

She was now speeding down steep linoleum steps. Her small legs were carrying her as fast as they could go to the kitchens. To Taisho and his loving wife. To food and warmth.

 

When she arrived, panting in a mess of cheap pinafores and tangled hair bobbles, there was someone unfamiliar already at the counter. Perched on a rickety bamboo stool was the blondest, palest youth she had ever seen. He sipped a hot chocolate in silence, watching her with striking green eyes and an unshakeable sense of curiosity.

 

“Oh, Kyoko! Hello dear!” exclaimed the head chef, looking up from a Michelin-star tuna platter “We were ever so worried! It’s terribly late.”

“Sorry…” Kyoko looked at her feet. Suddenly her scruffy appearance was shameful, her lateness inexcuseable.

 

The older woman looked down at the shabby youngster for a few seconds, then smiled.

 

“That’s okay dear… Look, you’ve got someone to eat with you today!” She grinned, tilting her head in the mysterious newcomer’s direction “Say hello to Kuon!”

 

*******

On the 30th of October 2016 at 5:42pm, Sho Fuwa was extremely bored. His long legs were draped over the side of the sofa that he was lounging on, head wedged uncomfortably in between two cushions as he watched TV.

 

Things hadn’t been right for a long time. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when, or how, but things had stopped being fun. Picking up girls was too easy. Topping the charts offered him no challenge. He was rolling in enough cash to make his parents eat their words. What was he to do with himself?

 

“SHO?!”

 

Shoko bustled in, tapping her high-heeled feet anxiously.

 

“Sho!”

 

He shifted his attention away from the screen briefly.

 

“Hmmm?”

“Why are you not getting ready? You should already be on stage!”

“Ugh… Five more minutes…”

“You can’t keep the audience waiting forever! Even teenage fangirls will get tired of a bad attitude.”

“I said, five more minutes!”

 

He twisted his head back to the daily news. Not much was on today: a bus strike in Bordeaux and flooding in the south were the main headlines.

 

“Sho!”

“What?” he snapped back.

 

His manager sighed in exasperation and clicked a ballpoint pen nervously.

 

“Please! Akatoki will do anything, okay? Just get on that stage!”

“Just gimme five minutes! I swear!”

 

He went silent as the news ended and the programme changed. Country music was playing as a badly-censored man judged mangy sheep. A tired-looking interviewer inside a hall. Some brunette chick talked about how much she loved the country. Ugh.

 

“I’m here to create a new me” the speakers whispered.

 

Recognition dawned on him. A smirk crept up his handsome face as he shifted to call to Shoko.

 

“You said you would do _anything_?”

 

*******

On the 2nd of November, 2016 at 8:32am, Kyoko Mogami noticed that the village was unusually quiet as she dropped off the mixed recycling. Almost all the cars and tractors were gone. No light came from upstairs windows. No dogs could be heard barking.

 

To her right, she heard a clatter as old Alistair Chapdelaine set off on his bicycle. He was solemn and graceful in his age, white beard neatly groomed and slicked hair tucked under an old beret. He wore a black suit that seemed too big for his feeble frame, with patent leather shoes that shone in the meager daylight. He bore a sad look and a black armband as he peddled off up the hill. Miroku’s funeral was being held today.

 

*******

On the 5th of November, 2016 at 5:03am, Kyoko Mogami noticed something on her window sill as she changed. Opening the window slightly and brushing aside the tattered lace curtains, she let in a moment’s cold air and picked up an envelope. It was a crisp white, with the word “Kyoko” printed neatly on the front. There was no address. No return address, for that matter either. There weren’t even any stamps.

 

It was early in the morning, and Kyoko was confused. Was this normal? Was this a thing that villagers just, sort of… _did_ every so often? In any case, it was addressed to her, right? So why not just open it?

 

On the 5th of November, 2016 at 5:05am, Kyoko Mogami opened the first letter from her stalker.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tough crowd.
> 
> "To cark it" is Brit slang for kicking the bucket. I hope that helps any confused Americans.


	10. Roxanne

# Roxanne

On the 5th of November, 2016, at 5:05am, Kyoko Mogami was looking at a photograph.

It was the only thing inside an otherwise empty envelope, printed on glossy paper in high resolution. A picture of her.

 

It was day in this image. From behind the thin meshwork curtains of her current living quarters, her petite body was visible. She was getting changed. Hunched over, she tugged a chunky knit jumper from her frame, revealing a cheap pink bra and a few purple stretch marks.

 

On the 5th of November, 2016 at 5:06am, Kyoko Mogami reached for a blanket from the bed to cover her half-dressed body and worriedly looked into the darkness outside. For the first time in a long while, she was very, very scared.

 

At the very same time, in a grimy basement in Paris, Lory Takarada was in the middle of a business meeting. Or as close to a business meeting as a man of his occupation could get.

 

Seven burly gangsters were crammed around a paisley-patterned camping table on plastic folding chairs. Not a single one of them was comfortable in this arrangement, their broad shoulders constantly battling for space and one man’s halitosis painfully noticeable.

The individual perhaps the least happily situated, though, was Southside Sammy. His youthful face was crushed into Lory’s feather boa and just inches from Natsuko the hissing anaconda’s jaws. He was harshly illuminated in blue from the only light source in the dark room- a stolen neon advertising board for fried chicken that hummed and crackled in a far corner. Thus highlighted, he was currently having a heated argument with Elmo “The Mortar” Miller on a cohort of ruskies that had appeared at the airport that morning:

 

“Look, it’s just some small gang chick cleanin’ up after ‘erself. Wassat gotta do wiv us?”

“I’m tellin’ ya, why’d they arrive at 2am unless it was somfin big? I recon there’s more’n meets th’eye...”

“My mole in the East-end Benders says they’re shifting south ASAP anyway!”

“Yeah-” piped in Jonny “Jailbreak” Fernandez aggressively from across the table for the third time in the last two minutes “-but I got men in Marseilles! Wot ‘bout me?”

 

Lory, resignedly leaning back, sighed. They were talking in circles and all Jailbreak was really doing was boasting about his links in the south. Why was he even here again? He really did _not_ have time for this. His hangover was killing him and young Kuon was ignoring his calls. It was time, he thought, to wrap things up and send these guys packing.

 

“Ladies-” he said, calmly breathing a cloud of cigar smoke and immediately hushing those around him “It’s five, I’m hungover, and half of you are as high as a kite.”

 

He looked pointedly at two thugs that had been silently drooling at the table for the last hour.

 

“Let’s call it a day and reassemble when they’ve actually done something noteworthy.”

 

With the scraping of chairs and general disorganisation of under-slept Mafiosi, the group filed out of the room one by one, leaving Lory alone. Once he was quite sure that they were all gone, he walked over to the neon sign and kicked the glowing chicken twice. It buzzed, and then slowly switched off. He was on his own and in the dark. Finally...

 

Tapping a few glowing embers from his cigar onto the floor, he leaned back in his chair and sat in silence, thinking. Why was young Kuon avoiding him these days? He had a bad feeling, somehow.  Something was bound to go down soon, it was just a question of when.

What he really wanted to do was to grab the young man and give him a good talking to. He was tired of being redirected to the answerphone, tired of this stupid game of cat and mouse.

_‘Really, kids these days...’_

 

Perhaps he was restless, that was all. Maybe he was overanalysing. What if, for the first time ever, his gut instinct was wrong?

 

He put out his cigar and closed his eyes. One was never too old to sleep on a problem.

 

*******

On the 5th of November, 2016 at 7:02am, Kyoko was having breakfast with her employers.

The two living mummies were in a lively discussion on the upcoming American elections.

 

“Ye see, I dinny think tha’ there’s a good outcome in there a’ all”

Pierre nodded his head enthusiastically, then mimed an over-important politician setting fire to something.

“Ah couldn’t agree moohr. I only ‘ope nothin’ of the sort ‘appens round ‘ere”

Her husband shrugged and resumed his painstaking effort to perfectly butter a slice of baguette.

“Oh, ye might think that now, but ye joohst wait an’ see-”

“Mrs. Berger, isn’t it rather early in the morning to have a confrontation?” interrupted Kyoko, pouring herself another cup of tea.

“Ooh, well, I know yer right dear, but it’s upsettin’ to me, all of this. Seems te me we’ve regressed, we ‘ave.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Berger.”

 

There was a moment of quietude as the geriatric fireball observed her young carer clearing away her plate.

 

“Say, Kyoohko, issere something goin’ on that ye’d like to talk aboot? Yer not very peppy today.”

“Oh no, I’m completely fine! Really! I’m feeling absolutely splendid!”

 

Odette watched Kyoko take the empty plates to the sink, a frown forming on her face. She’d spent enough time as a woman of God to known that lying was a sin.

 

*******

 

For the next week, Kyoko made regular visits to Reino. On the whole, he seemed to be coping well with the loss of his friend.

He had bought himself a large sheet of leather, and could usually be found working on cutting it into thick strips to distract himself. He announced, with a melancholy air, that he was making leather dog collars. He would buy a puppy, he decided, and he would spoil it rotten. He would take it on walks up to the windmill with the rest of the band, maybe teach it to guard sheep. Any old mongrel would do, he only wanted a little company for the cold winter nights ahead.

 

Kyoko had said that this was an excellent idea, and happily helped him punch holes into the ends of the straps. It pained her to see him like this, and she desperately wanted to ease his sadness.

 

So when, at 3:32pm on the 9th of November, he suggested that they took an amble up to the old windmill, she immediately agreed.

It was cold as they made their way through the sparse forest. Their breath formed dancing white clouds in the chilly air, adding to the already misty atmosphere. There were no bluebells left at this time of year, only mushrooms and crouching brambles with glistening thorns remained. There seemed to be far more thornbushes here than she had remembered. They curled possessively around the thin birch trees, sprawling out of control over roots and squishy earth. Leaning in, spiky, from every angle, they trapped the pair inwards as they struggled on. Prickly tongues lashed out like a million tentacles, moving of their own accord in the wind.

 In fact, it felt to Kyoko that they had quite taken the place over in her absence. In several places along the path, the pair had to stop to negotiate a particularly vicious patch of briars, Reino using his heavy boots to stamp down the curly boughs and Kyoko quickly pushing aside the thin branches that hanged from overhead.

 

So when they did arrive, covered in scrapes and scratches, on the top of the clear ridge, Kyoko was extremely pleased to be out in the open. The view from here was still the same, after all this time.

Vineyards spread out below down the steep sides of the hill, now put to rest for the winter. Long swaying grass and wild wheat rustled in a cold wind that whipped by, bending and dancing like small ballerinas. The butterflies and rainbow beetles were no longer fluttering about, but instead wild ducks flew overhead in perfect formation. The leader dipped and rolled in the harsh wind in a fierce dance. Gone, too, were the golden dandelions. Their skeletal remains were swept up one by one. Little white seeds disappeared in the wind, travelling someplace new. Down in the valley, Eugnes still lay quiet and squat. From up here it was small, ever so small, and perhaps more beautiful than she had ever seen it.

 

After she felt that the surroundings had been sufficiently scanned, Kyoko looked back to find that Reino was no longer by her side. He was a few metres ahead, his crouching figure almost obscured by the tall grass. He seemed to be looking at something.

 

She walked over to him to see what he was up to. He motioned to her to sit on her haunches and she complied.

 

“Ey, tek a gander a’ this” he said, pointing at the mud.

 

Imprinted in the cold soil was a small formation. Three large circular indents were equidistant from each other, forming an equilateral triangle.

 

“I reckon it’s a telescope or summat, bird-watchers meybe.”

“I didn’t know there were rare birds around here”

“Nor I, only wha’ else could’t be? Ye reely think somebody decided to lug a camera and tripod up ‘ere?”

“A camera...”

 

Kyoko stood up and walked to the edge of the elevated ground. She was centimetres away from the steepest descent.

 

“Ey, Kyokes, be sef! That’s dangerous, that is!”

“I know, I know... I’m just,” she said, scanning the landscape below “looking for something”

 

Reino looked at her with a mix of confusion and concern.

But Kyoko had already found what she was looking for. From here, looking far, far below, she could see the Berger house on the dirt road to the Kotonami farmstead. Backed by a dark forest and slightly obscured by the dying grapevines, it crouched on the edge of her vision. She could just about see into a large protruding window, covered by thin lace curtains.

 

“A camera...” Kyoko repeated, stepping back with a look of certainty.

“Uh, yew alright there? What’s goin’ on?”

“Oh, nothing! Let’s take a look at the windmill!”

 

*******

On the 17th of August 2016 at 7:23pm, Kyoko Mogami was walking through a particularly unsavoury part of town in the company of one Lory Takarada.

 

Walking on the chipped, mossy pavements they passed two bent lampposts, an inundation of mindless graffiti, and several takeaway houses inhabited by seedy gangsters who watched their progress with amusement. One of these establishments, named “Pentucky Best Fried Cheeckan” was missing its neon signboard. Its owner personally came out from behind the greasy desk to shout abuse at Lory, before spitting on the ground and muttering about “them thievin’ japs”.

 

“You seem to be… well known… around here” said Kyoko warily as they passed two men in crinkled suits who were staring daggers at them.

“Oh, they just can’t get enough of me ‘round here. Mind you stay close, child.” replied Lory, pulling her away from a few discarded needles that she was about to step on.

 

They skirted a dilapidated shop, gutted by fire, and turned a corner.

 

“Now, Miss Mogami, I want to be crystal clear about the terms on which you are boarding for the next few days,” he said, mentally counting the numbers on the apartment blocks that they were passing, “You are under absolutely NO circumstances to interact with customers, or do any kind of work other than managerial and cleaning. You are not to disturb the other residents. Most importantly, you are to treat those accommodating you with respect.”

“Yes, sir.” She replied nervously.

“Good”

 

At this point, he indicated that they were heading to a collapsing brutalist block on the right and walked over to the front porch. The main door was made of a solid sheet of red metal that was covered in bangs and scrapes, and looked practically organic with all of the interesting fungal patches decorating it. Interrupting Kyoko’s fascinating inner design monologue on the contrast between the concrete and mushrooms, Lory stepped forward to tap the door. Using the differing pitches of the dented sections and the duller timbre of the moss, he performed an improvised cover of the chorus of “Toxic” by Britney Spears. He did so with such an inexplicably serious expression that his young charge was completely at a loss for words by the time that the acoustic rendition was over.

 

There was a brief silence and then the sound of clicking heels could be heard approaching the other side of the door. Seconds later, a small sliding compartment in the door folded back to reveal a set of heavily-lined eyes.

 

“Who’re you? Waddaya want?”

“It’s Lorenzo Takarada. I’m an associate of The Mortar…”

“Fine, fine-” the mysterious figure interrupted “but waddaya _want_?”

“I was hoping you could put a roof over this kid’s head” he replied with a furtive tilt of the head to his disorientated companion.

“How many days?”

“Three”

 

A succession of heavy clanking noises was followed by the door slowly swinging open. A woman wearing a fluffy bathrobe and red stilettos looked down on the pair in the doorway, a remarkable feat given Lory’s considerable height, and truly a terrifying sight to behold first-hand.

 

“Ah! Roxanne! What a pleasant surprise-”

“Cut the chit-chat. I can do what ya want but it’ll cost ya”

 

Sighing, the old gangster reached into his purple velour suit and produced, as if from nowhere, a thick wad of dog-eared bills.

 

“Keep her away from your clients. Make sure she doesn’t run into Alstair.”

 

Roxanne quickly flicked through the bills and then looked back at Lory.

 

“That’s extra. I gotta have hush money for the other girls.”

 

With a pained look, Lory fished around the inside of his jacket once more before handing over as much remaining cash as he had left. He was an incurable cheapskate.

 

“Right, if you’ve finished draining my savings I think I’ll be off now. Take care!” he said, turning 180 degrees on a penny and walking off with as dignified an air as one could down quite so dodgy a street.

 

“Well don’t just stand there gawping! Come on in. Time is money, the way I work” Bustled the older woman, motioning for Kyoko to come inside.

 

Once Kyoko had stepped in, the heavy door was once more swung closed behind them and no less than 16 locks were set.

 

“So, babes, what’s yer name?” said Roxanne as she led her down a long and dark corridor. Kyoko noticed that her voice was deep and rich, with a strangely sing-song lilting accent.

“Oh, um. I’m Kyoko. Nice to meet you, miss Roxanne.”

The adolescent was quite taken aback when her statement elicited husky chuckles from her guide. The taller woman, after having laughed herself to the point of breathlessness, offered an explanation.

 

“Aw, babes… Roxanne is my stage name…. Fucking hell, it’s weird hearing an innocent young thing like you usin’ it. Better stick to my real name, or I’ll keep cracking up… I’m Sally, by the by.”

“Um, nice to meet you miss Sally. Thank you for letting me stay with you.”

“Aw that’s alright darlin’, welcome-” she said, unlocking door no. 304 and swinging it wide open for Kyoko to enter “to our ‘umble abode”.

 

Kyoko spent the next twenty minutes sitting on a springless sofa with her suitcase on her lap as she was introduced to each of her new housemates. They were all invariably stunning beautiful and barely dressed, and seemed a fairly friendly bunch after their hush money had been dished out.

The one name Patricia (though she much preffered being called by her stage name, “Keira”) was particularly helpful, setting up a sleeping bag in the corner of the room and checking who had clients booked for the night.

 

“So, Kyoko was it? What brings you here to our haven of sin?”

 

The other women in the room hushed and turned their heads to hear the full story. There was nothing quite like a good old drama.

 

“I… Don’t have anywhere to stay…”

 

There was a brief pause, then Kiera placed a warm hand on Kyoko’s folded ones.

 

“That’s not the whole story though, is it love? It’s okay, you can tell us”

 

On the 17th of August 2016 at 9:02pm, Kyoko Mogami was severely sleep-deprived. She was sat between three strippers, one of whom was offering emotional support, and completely exhausted. For the past 72 hours, she just hadn’t stopped. It was one disaster after another for her, a spiral of confusion and loneliness. She had no idea what to do, no idea what tomorrow would bring, and no idea why life had so unexpectedly taken such a turn.  So when she was given this bizarre opening to vent her feelings, she took it. The air in the small flat was dark as she dissected her life, piece by piece, for the people surrounding her. She didn’t start at the beginning, nor really the middle. And there wasn’t really an end to her tale, either. Chunks of non-chronological information spilled out one by one into the dark air of the flat as she began to softly sob. It was hard, this part: remembering. Because remembering meant replaying what had happened, categorising, making sense. And she didn’t want any of this to make sense at all. She desperately wanted this to be a bad dream, to wake up in a rosy world. But the chances of that were looking increasingly slim, so for now the best she could do was talk.

 

When the talking was over, a girl named Olga walked over from a corner of the room and wrapped Kyoko in a warm hug. She was strikingly pale, with white eyelashes and thin, slightly lopsided lips. Her ocean blue eyes and red corset gave the impression of a porcelain doll. But as Kyoko was engulfed by hugs from all sides, she decided that Olga was better than a thing of china. Olga was warm, soft. Olga could feel, could empathise. She was almost happy here, surrounded by such a heartfelt embrace. Perhaps, she thought, she would like to stay there forever.

 

*******

At exactly 4:00pm on the 9th of November, 2016, Kyoko Mogami was almost back in the village. Reino was peeling back the last few nettles on the path as they slowly made their way down the hill.

The sun was setting by the time their feet found cobblestones once more. They said quick goodbyes before making their separate ways for the night.

 

Kyoko watched pensively as her breath form little clouds in the dwindling light. She missed street lamps. She missed having something to guide her home, having a little comfort on the road.

 

A soft brake screeched behind her as the “Tsuruga Veterinarian” van pulled into the main square. Stopping, but doing her damnedest to look disinterested, she watched as Ren and Yukihito got out and began unloading. The former moved with a strange stiffness in his left arm, carrying as much as he could with his right.

Hit with strange constrictions in her heart, Kyoko turned around and ran back the way she had come to “Takagi and Sons groceries and butchery”. Slamming open the front door and startling a bewildered Reino into tripping over a box of turnips, she (rather more out of breath than would have suited the melodrama hanging in the air) declared:

 

“Got any aloe vera gel?”

 

One minute later she pushed open the door of the vet’s office across the square and marched over to the lone individual at the computer.

 

“Mr. Tsuruga! Um, I know we might not be on the best of terms, but-” she thrust a fist holding a tube of cooling cream in his general direction and fixed her eyes determinedly on her feet. “I’m really sorry about what happened and I, um, I hope we can continue to be agreeable terms”

 

A large palm raised her chin until her eyes met with those of a chuckling Ren Tsuruga.

 

“Thank you, miss Mogami. Let’s get on well.”

 

At exactly 4:06pm on the 9th of November, 2016, Ren Tsuruga was stood in his office holding an unused cylinder of aloe vera. Kyoko Mogami was gone. One Yukihito Yashiro, however, was not. In fact, he had never been gone. He had only been eavesdropping from around the corner in the surgery.

 

“Soooooooo… _Miss_ Mogami is it? What’s going on between the two of you?”

“Yukihito-” said Ren, smiling his terrifying leonine smile, “I would appreciate if you kept you nose attached to your own face, rather than in someone else’s business”

 

*******

On the 17th of August, 2016, at 9:36pm Kyoko Mogami and a team of strippers were devising something stupid to do. The specification that it _had_ to be something entirely idiotic had been introduced, after a bottle of cheap plonk, by Sally, who insisted that it was the best way to get bad things off your mind.

 

Angel and Patricia were locked in heated debate over whether they would be caught vandalizing the Eiffel tower or not when Kyoko interrupted.

 

“Do you think-” she said, twirling her bedraggled black hair around her fingers “We could change my hair?”

 

In an instant, it was decided. Ten minutes later a gaggle of ladies in high heels and sweat suits descended on the nearest off-license and loudly argued over which cheap hair dye to buy. The general consensus amongst the noisy group was that the stupidest colour was pink. However, the pink hair dye seemed to contain more than just a few illegal carcinogens, and they didn’t feel that they were in a stupid enough mood to risk the health of their newly adopted child. The next colour they wanted was green, but this was immediately vetoed by Olga, who said that it wouldn’t go with Kyoko’s eyes. They were discussing the merits of shimmery violet when Kyoko sheepishly stepped forward with a box of neon orange.

 

“I, um, I don’t want to inconvenience you… This one’s the cheapest one…”

 

The hue set off such an immediate sartorial allergic reaction in the older chaperones of the gang that they almost immediately agreed that it was a truly horrific choice, and that they must absolutely undertake the tinting of Kyoko’s locks in this grotesque colour.

 

Though no one was around to witness it, the old Polish man who ran the store almost certainly breathed a deep sigh of relief when they left.

And when they left, they returned straight home to an insalubrious bathroom where Mireya (who had a foul mouth and excellent hand-eye coordination) hacked off as much black hair as she could with a pair of kitchen scissors.

 

Kyoko watched with a strange detachment as her hair was chopped off. Each bunch that fell to the dark, grimy floor left her head felling a little bit lighter. Years of growth were lying on dirty tiles. Formative years were being crushed underfoot.

 Sho’s princess was well and truly dead. She had been slashed neatly from the young girl’s head… or, had she? She reflected upon the transformation, staring at her own reflection as the last strands were cut. Perhaps, rather than a death, this was a rebirth. A metamorphosis, of sorts? She was morphing, synthesizing from a sheltered princess to a soldier on the battlefield of life. All was fair, she had learned, in love and in war. Which one had it been with Sho?

 

When the bright orange began to soak in, a shout arose from her entourage.

 

“What d’you think then? How’s this new Kyoko feelin’?”

 

She looked into the mirror. Her head seemed to glow a fiery persimmon as she looked up. A halo.

Somewhere between the harsh chemical sting and the wave of emotion overcoming her, Kyoko found a reason to cry.

 

“I feel-” she said “bloody terrific”

 

The girls whooped and cheered in unison.

 

“Atta girl!”

 

On the 17th of August, 2016, at 10:23pm Kyoko Mogami was sat on Olga’s bed, surrounded by sudden adoptive mothers. They had all dressed up to go out to work, wearing corsets and lingerie and everything in-between with quite spectacular stiletto shoes.

 

“My first client’s coming in twenty! Make this quick!”

“Well, if you’d stop elbowing me…”

“Hey, anyone seen my falsies?”

“Stop that! You’re squishing poor Kyoko!”

 

Sally, acting as lead photographer, spent five minutes stressing over the miniature squabbles that were breaking out before pointing her lens directly at the girl at the centre of it all and shouting “WHO RUN VE WUHRLD?”.

 

“GIRLS!”

 

*******

The 12th of November, 2016, was a clear and mild day. The morning had been cool and dark, but unfortunately not dark enough to conceal the presence of another letter on Kyoko Mogami’s window sill.

Once again, the envelope was clean and white, bearing only the first name of the girl to whom it was addressed. Inside was a neatly typed note that read:

 

“I heard a nasty rumour about you the other day. You’re not very good at covering your tracks, are you?”

 

This time, Kyoko scrunched up the letter as small as she could. Out of anger, fear… who knew? The only certainty was that she was shaking.

 

At breakfast that day, she burned the omelette for the first time in her considerable culinary career for the Bergers. The aforementioned couple then had an argument over the question of free will and refused to talk to each other. Later, Kyoko stepped on a needle lost in the front room carpet and slipped on the muddy track on the way to town.

 

And, as if the open blue sky had not mocked her enough in one day, on the 12th of November 2016 at 2:12pm when Kyoko Mogami walked into the village, she saw a familiar blond singer seated on a bench on the main square.

 

_‘Sho’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays!  
> My god, the formatting for this chapter is horrendous...
> 
> Update: I had a nightmare the other day in which someone commented a list of criticisms of this story. What's worse, they were all entirely valid... Maybe I'll rewrite this when it's completed.


	11. Holes

#  Holes 

**A/N: () indicates that the characters are speaking in English, whilst {} indicates Russian.**

On the 12th of November 2016 at 2:12pm, Kyoko Mogami’s heart was beating at approximately 190 bpm. The neck on her hair was standing on end, she was shaking slightly, and her life was beginning to flash before her eyes.

 

_‘Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god-’_

What was going on? Was she dreaming? Why was he here? Had he seen her?

 

Given the fact that she had been stood stock still for about twenty seconds now and he hadn’t moved an inch, she decided that the answer to that last question just might be in the negative. Good. Calm, now. If she could just make it to somewhere half-concealed…

 

Heart still racing and adrenaline up, she side-stepped into a side-passage and wound her way to the back of the square. Re-entering, she was now sure that Sho couldn’t see her: his back was turned. Reaching one slender arm behind her, she turned a door handle and edged her way into the shop front, closing the door as slowly as she could.

 

“Kyoko? What’s wrong?”

 

Behind the front desk of the vet’s, Yashiro had noticed (with some alarm) her silent shuffle away from the door.

 

She whipped around, then shrank into a crouching position behind a waiting room chair. Putting a finger to her lips, she frantically raised her eyebrows in a desperate attempt to communicate her plight.

 

“Shush,” she whispered. “Just…. Shhhhhhhhh….”

 

There came a scraping noise as Ren poked his head through the surgery door as the back.

 

“Yukihito, what’s… Miss Mogami?”

 

His brown eyes met her golden ones just in time for a long, muscular arm to push open the door and drag her away.

 

Suddenly Kyoko felt an enormous, crushing pressure on her arm. She was whisked away into a side alley, a heavy body pushing hers against a rough brick wall. Before she had time to register her situation, a strong hand was clamping hers back, and a face that she absolutely did not want to see was just inches from hers.

 

There was practically a look of _mirth_ on his devilishly handsome face as he cupped her cheeks and began to caress her neck.

 

“I’ve _finally_ found you,” said Sho, leaning in uncomfortably close “It’s been so _dull_ without you…. Won’t you come home?”

 

Kyoko looked up, trapped, and let a moment of panic turn into one of pure, unadulterated rage.

 

“What do you mean, _home_? You really think I _want_ to go back with you? Whose fault do you think it is that I’m here? Huh?” A million sentient incarnations of anger rose above her in a dark cloud as she gained momentum “Now get off of me you CREEP!”

 

He slackened his grip and stood back a little, a look of mockery forming in his icy blue eyes.

 

“You talk like you ever had any other home. You forget that you owe everything to me. Without me, what would you have? You’re just a jumped-up pantry girl who doesn’t know your place. You should appreciate my generosity; thank me for what I did. Weren’t you happy?”

 

Tension crackled electrically in the air. They had already reached the peak of the battle and Kyoko had decided that she was out for blood.

 

“No, Shotarou. No I was not happy. I RAN AWAY, okay? I ran away from your mum, from the hotel, and I ran away from YOU!” exasperation was now overriding the shivers of fear running down her spine. She was speaking with the speed of a racehorse “I told you I was unhappy and you ignored me. And now you want me back? Well listen here, fucker. You heard me on TV. I said I was starting life anew, and I jolly well will. I’m going to have the time of my bloody life out here, _without you,_ so you can fuck right off into the sunset for all I care.”

 

And with that, she kicked him in the shin and began running like a madman.

 

He, of course, gave chase.

 

“Don’t you love me?” he called after her “Stop playing hard to get!”

 

They raced along the cobblestones, him closing the distance between them as they raced towards a dead end. Kyoko stopped at the high field boundary and whipped her head around to see him almost upon her.

 

“You know you can’t run, just give up now!”

 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Kyoko soundly placed both hands on the wooden barrier and neatly vaulted over. After weaving her way through a flock of sheep, jumping the other side of the pen, and systematically passing through every vineyard possible on the way back around to the Berger house, she realized that his footsteps were no longer behind her.  

But walking down the familiar dirt roads in the oncoming twilight, Kyoko held back a sigh of relief. She could not allow herself that, just yet.

 

*******

On the 18th of August 2016 at 10:23am, Kyoko Mogami woke up on the lap of a new friend.

 

“Mmmf” she groaned, groggily rubbing her eyes “Morning, Sally…”

“Morning dear!”

 

The two sat perfectly still in tired silence before Kyoko shot bolt upright, bright red and stuttering wildly.

 

“I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to inconvenience you- I mean, I- Thank you for letting me use your lap. I can’t believe someone as undeserving as me-”

“Babes, calm it! It’s A-OK wi’ me…” said Sally, getting up and then stumbling to the fridge “Ah, bleedin’ ‘eck, me leg’s gone to sleep!”

 

The colour began to drain from Kyoko’s face.

 

“I’mSOsorryIcan’texpressmyregretenoughIamsoverydeeplyindebtedtoyou-”

 

Suddenly the background chatter of the room stopped as every older lady turned their eyes to the door. Sally opened her smoky eyes wide and fixed them on Kyoko, putting a finger to her lips.

Silence reigned supreme in the room as their ears picked up on the noise coming up the corridor. A slow, methodical set of noises drew nearer. **Tap, shuffle. Tap, shuffle.**

Sally opened her smudgy red lips, still staring at the closed door.

 

“Alstair.” She whispered.

 

She slowly closed the fridge door, then snapped her neck a perfect 90 degrees to the left and frenetically signaled to Olga.

 

 “Kyoko! Get Kyoko outta here!”

 

Olga sashayed quickly over to Kyoko and, with a look somewhere between patience and that of a WBC heavyweight champion winning for the fourth time in a row, wrapped her arms firmly around her waist and hoisted her off the ground. She then calmly and quickly walked into the bathroom, still with Kyoko in tow, and shut the door firmly behind them. After delicately depositing the teen on a cleaner patch of tiling, she put a finger to her lips and sat down beside her.

Kyoko was just beginning to contemplate the sheer muscular power it would require to so easily lift her up when a loud clanging noise wrenched her from her thoughts.

 

“Open up! You’re behind on last month, so you had better cough up this time.” Came a deafening and surprisingly clipped, upper-class voice.

 

“Coooooming, coooming…” Mireya’s slow drawl sounded from behind the wall.

 

The harsh clatter of twelve sliding locks coming undone was heard and then the voices became clearer.

 

“Have you got the money or not? I am a busy man, I’ll have you know.”

“We haaave it. Heeereee…”

 

The sound of flicking notes. A few irregular taps.

 

“You’re missing some. You have to pay for the damages. You there, tell me, does that cupboard look even remotely fixed to you?”

 

A gentle swooshing noise. Kyoko assumed that he was pointing at the door of the pots and pans cupboard, which was hanging diagonally on one hinge.

 

“Buuuut… Mister Alstair… Youuuuuu are the one who broooke it…”

 

The crisp sound of a slap. The defensive scraping of shoes on the floor.

 

“Did I not make myself clear? You have to pay for the damages.”

“But I…”

 

A more solid, dull impact.

 

“Pleeease! Next mooonth…”

“That-” _thunk_ “is precisely-” _whack_ “what you said-” _crash_ “last month.”

 

“Wait!” It was Keira’s voice, quivering slightly “I’ll pay this time. I got extra last night… just, just stop.”

 

The shuffle of fabric.

 

“Really, where _are_ your manners?”

“Please… please stop…”

 

The flick or crumpled notes. The brush of a shirt on a wool-mix coat.

 

“Good good, au revoir then…”

 

 **Tap, shuffle. Tap, shuffle.** Growing more distant this time, reaching the door. It stopped. A pregnant silence hung in the stifling air.

 

“Oh and next time-” the creak of a door latch “I’ll want extra for your new little boarder. Good day.”

 

The closing of the door. The rhythmic, receding footsteps gradually disappearing.

 

When Kyoko emerged from the bathroom, Sally had not moved an inch. She was stood, rigid, staring at the door. Her eyes were open and staring wildly. A slight frown disrupted her brow. One hand was reaching into the cutlery drawer, and in its shaking grip was a blunted knife.

 

“That bastard, I’m gunna gut ‘im someday”

 

*******

On the 20th of March, 2008, at 6:45pm, Kyoko Mogami was staring in awe.This was really quite an achievement given her past experiences.

 There had been that one Saudi prince who _insisted_ on releasing his 32 trained hawks during the entrée, and that German football player who personally spraypainted the tables in the colours of his home team. This was not mentioning the Spanish royal who had had large ornamental baths of champagne placed around the hall, and the British musician who had installed a small swimming pool for his (illegal, she suspected) pet alligator.

 

But this… This was on a whole other level.

 

The most immediate thing about the Fuwa banquet hall was the smell. Overpowering, sweet, it was the smell of thousands upon thousands of flowers. They decked the walls, they climbed the windows. They engulfed ornamental pillars and invaded the darkest corners. They were everywhere.

Red peonies, all miraculously the same colour and shape, all smiling serenely from on high, all watching, waiting for the show to start.

 

(“Your dad must _really_ like flowers.”)

(“I think it’s a family thing… I don’t really get it.”) replied the blond boy standing next to her.

(“You don’t like them?”)

(“I mean, what’s so special?”)

 

Kyoko whipped round, a million sparkles forming in her golden eyes as she began to speak at something approaching the speed of the average racecar.

 

(“Don’t you think they look just like a princess’ skirt?”)

 

She pointed at a specimen leaning out of his suit pocket. He blushed slightly.

 

(“Look at the little frills! Like petticoats! The subtle shine of the petals, like shimmery silk! Isn’t it exactly like what a fairy princess would wear?”)

 

Kuon thought for a moment, then a childish grin set in on his face as he began to speak.

 

(“Speaking of fairies… Do you know the story of Princess Rosa?”)

 

Kyoko’s eyes lit up. They could not possibly have been more aflame, or she would legally have been reclassified as a human-lighthouse hybrid.

 

(“They say that sometimes, if you’re reeeeeeeally lucky, a flower is inhabited by a little fairy called Princess Rosa. And-”) he leaned in confidentially and whispered (“Sometimes she has a hidden treasure…”)

 

His younger friend’s eyes continued to glimmer for a few moments before her eyes began to tear up. This was not the reaction that he had been expecting.

 

(“That’s so lonely!”) she sobbed (“She doesn’t have any friends, and she’s stuck in a flower all alone. Doesn’t she have a prince? Every princess needs a prince!”)

(“They do? ”) Kuon had been completely blindsided by this turn of events.

(“Yes!”) Came the adamant, if tearful, reply. (“Just like I have Sho!”)

 

“KYOKO!”

 

Speak of the devil, here he was now.

 

Kyoko ran off gleefully down the hallway, giggling with joy at the prospect of playing with her handsome prince.

Kuon was left alone, his arm outstretched in some silent, unconscious attempt to call her back.

 

From behind him, Anatoly the enormous rhinoceros of a bodyguard stirred.

{“Here.”} he said, handing over a carton of orange juice. And then, {“You know son, from here on out, girls are only going to seem even more complicated.”}

 

*******

On the 20th of August 2016 at 5:45am, Kyoko Mogami was packing her suitcase. She trawled the flat for toiletries and loose socks that she’d left about, and then counted off on her fingers to make sure she had everything.

 

“You ready?” Sally peeked her head around the door just as she had finished zipping up the sides. “Let’s go!”

 

The air was cool but light that morning as they walked to the station. The sun was just beginning to rise in the far horizon, bathing the skyline in pools of orange and red that set off Kyoko’s fiery hair.

The empty streets they walked down echoed sadly in the growing light, as if they were singing a funeral dirge. For the first time, she became intensely aware of the loneliness of the inner city. The quietness, the cold, the silence. The faded shop windows were pitiful in their forced gaiety. Their vacancy only highlighted their lack of life, prolonged their mournful stares.

The thing that this heaving, struggling beast called Paris suffered from, she reflected, was a superfluity of holes: pot holes, bullet holes, injection holes… But most of all, a hole where the heart should be. Its inhabitants were hollowed out inside by their endless toil. All their money, all their efforts, all their hopes and their dreams, all drained from them by another hole. A hole at the bottom of the drainage basin, at the end of the funnel. They tumbled, fell and were pushed down its steep slopes, into the jaws of distrust and discontent. But the devourer of all was crime. Rearing its seven ugly heads and consuming all: crime. It snaked its way into every crack and corner, extending and expanding like an engorged dragon. Nobody could escape its lethal claws. But even crime could not escape the holes: the holes in its stomach, creating more mindless greed, always, always wanting more.

 

Kyoko was still noticing holes when she had arrived on the platform. The holes in her sweater, the holes in her socks, the hole where her future lay…

 

As her train pulled and the doors opened, she was hit with a moment of panic. This was it, this was the new chapter of her life. She was leaving everything she had ever known behind and wandering blindly forwards. She wasn’t prepared at all. She was afraid of being alone again. She was afraid of having to adapt to somewhere new. She was afraid, simply put, of the unknown.

 

She turned around to her chaperone. On the bustling platform underneath the electric clock, she looked up, and with tears in her eyes, cried:

“Please! Please don’t make me go! I’ll work with you… I’ll learn… you can teach me. Please! Let me stay!”

 

Sally, tall, calm, and composed, looked down on the whimpering teen.

“Babes, what’re you on about? You’re young, you ‘ave your whole life ahead o’ you! It might be scary, but there’s a whole wuhrld out there waitin’ to be conquered. You and I both know you’ve got too much talent to be stuck strippin’ for married men for the rest o’ your life.” She sighed, then playfully ruffled Kyoko’s hair. “Now, you’re gonna get on that train, and yer gonna face yer fears, awright?”

 

Kyoko sniffed and rubbed her eyes a little.

 

“Fine…” she said, reaching into her bag. “promise me that you’ll also conquer _your_ fears. Promise me that we’ll both do our best”

 

She handed over a thin package wrapped in tissue paper. Sally’s penciled brows rose in confusion as she fumbled about with it.

 

“I- I can’t accept this! Ain’t this super precious?”

 

Kyoko stepped onto the train.

 

“Promise me.”

 

The doors closed. The wheels began to turn.

 

Kyoko placed her hand on the glass as she glided past Sally. She couldn’t hear the words, but she could see her mouth move.

 

_‘I promise’_

*******

On the 16th of September 2008, Kuon Hizuri was sat opposite a stranger. Well, two strangers.

 

A youthful man leaned haphazardly forwards, legs splayed and dark hair haphazardly hanging over his tall forehead. Beside him sat a lady with a bounty of golden locks falling to her waist and vermillion lips. Her back was poker straight, and she was looking at her companion with what can only be described as distaste.

 

“Rick! You’re supposed to be prepping the child for leadership, not teaching him to slouch!”

“Relax, honey. I’ve already bought the chicken…”

 

*******

On the 12th of November 2016 at 11:23pm, Kyoko Mogami was curled up in bed. She was not curled up on the mattress in fetal position, but instead sitting scrunched up against the headboard. The adrenaline of the chase had long since worn off, and now her peril was beginning to rush back to her.

 

_‘He knows.’_

 

Suddenly she could see his smirking face again, pressing into hers. She could feel his grip tighten around her wrists, the rough feeling of the brick wall pressing into her back, and the dread of being trapped.

Trapped. That’s what she was.

 

She stared out into the darkness. The faint glimmer of starlight shone through hundreds of little holes in her lace curtains. Holes. They had followed her here.

 

But these holes were honest, beautiful. Transparent, they hid nothing. They let in light, rather than blocking it out. Perhaps her life was full of holes. Which ones led to light?

 

She fell asleep still upright, still facing her windows.

 

At the same time, Ren Tsuruga was brushing his teeth. He was slightly distracted, his eyes wandering around the edges of the mirror as he rhythmically moved the brush backwards and forwards.

He was thinking back to that afternoon. He was thinking back to the exact moment that he had rushed out of the office and caught a glance of the Mogami girl slammed against a wall. Her unexpectedly foul language was ensued by a remarkable display of self-defense, and before he could even think of intervening she had vanished into a field of sheep.

Her young pursuer, halted at the barrier, had turned around to him and snarled:

 

“What do you want? Back off!”

 

He almost let his mask slip. Almost. Instead his relflexes slapped a glowing smile on his face, and a tone of menace set in.

 

“I’m going to have to ask you on behalf of the townspeople to refrain from making our residents uncomfortable.”

 

The teen stepped back, a malicious smirk plain to see.

 

“Residents? She lives in Paris. You know she doesn’t belong here.”

“Miss Mogami has lived here for four months now.” Ren quickly shot back. His smile was blinding.

 

Sho paused for a minute, reflecting, and then resumed his verbal assault.

 

“What?” He laughed. Somehow, he was able to condescend from a considerably lower vantage-point than his rival “You got the hots for plain jane? I bet you’d just _love_ to do what I’ve done to her. It’s too late for you.”

 

His next words were still reverberating around Ren’s mind.

_“You can’t do anything about it, I’m Sho Fuwa!”_

 

Ren spat out the toothpaste and looked up. An inescapable moment of realization was hitting him head-on. _That’s_ who Sho Fuwa was. _That’s_ why the name Kyoko Mogami sounded so familiar. He looked at the blooms adorning his arms and rinsed his mouth.

At this point, he decided, it must be fate.

 

Seven hours later, Kyoko Mogami was once again engaged in low-level chit-chat with her employers over buttered bread and coffee.

 

“Oooh, that’s terrible that is!”

Mr. Berger raised his left hand in a questioning manner.

“Yes, Mrs. Berger. What’s the matter?”

“Listen te this! Some poohr farmer’s been shot! Not an hour’s drive from ‘ere, Courson-Les-Carrières.”

Pierre motioned an old shot gun, then a small deer.

“It can’t ‘ave been an accident! It says ‘ere ‘e was missing three fingers. Something’s not right, ye knoohw.”

 

Kyoko absentmindedly put down her mug of coffee.

 

“Quite, I’m sure.”

 

Three hours later, she was walking into town when it started to hail. Large frozen beads fell from the heaven and beat her body with admirable tenacity as she began to sprint. The metallic whine of a small engine approached from behind as Kanae sped past and then stopped a few metres ahead.

 

“Get on!”

“Kanaaaaaeeeeeeeeeee~~~”

 

The driver spent the next 5 minutes simultaneously battling off the affections of her passenger and navigating the sea of pot holes in the blinding downpour.

 

“Mou! Gerrof, I’m tryna park!”

 

Kyoko pouted and stayed put. She was more disappointed than she let on as they shuffled into the grocery store.

 

“ ‘Ey up Kyokes! Kana! Whatever ‘appened to ye?”

“Well-” grunted Kanae as she pried her friend off her arm “If I could just get a word in edgeways, you’d find out that the most _incredible_ thing happened yesterday.”

“Hm?” Reino distractedly looked up from the counter. He seemed to be fiddling with something at his feet.

“Yukihito saw Sho Fuwa! In this town! Our town! Can you believe the coincidence?”

“What, that pretty boy? I-”

“What have you got behind the counter?” interrupted Kyoko. She shook ever so slightly as she spoke, her grip on the wet fabric of her jumper tightening.

 

In a moment that completely threw off any previous expectations and seemed almost providential in its confidence, Reino casually lifted a small Rottweiler up and placed in on the counter. It growled wetly at the girls through its floppy jowls before curling up and settling down.

So _this_ was his new puppy. She had to admit, it was rather larger than she had expected. And those teeth, too, were probably sharper than they needed to be… Throughout this internal commentary, the black furry lump continued to stare at her with beady obsidian eyes as if searching her very soul.

 

“Cute, innee? Look,” he began to ruffle the thin charcoal fur on the somnolent mass “here Holey, here boy!”

 

Kanae nearly dropped the packet of pasta she’d just picked off a shelf.

 

“You called him _what_?”

“Holey. ‘Cuz of the ‘ole in ‘is ear. And it’s sort of a pun, on ‘holy’.”

 

The two girls groaned in perfect sync.

 

“Reino Takagi… I swear to god… That doesn’t even-”

 

On the 13th of November 2016 at 7:02pm Kyoko Mogami was closing the oven door on a fresh pan of baked ratatouille.

 

 _‘Holes…’_ she thought ‘ _Why hadn’t I noticed that it was this simple?’_

 

On the 17th of November, 2016, at 5:02am, Kyoko Mogami looked out of her windows to see that everything outside had frosted over. This, unfortunately, included another white envelope set on her window sill. Snatching it, cat-like, from the cold air, she hastily crumpled it and shoved it under a loose floor board. She then tiptoed through the darkness to the bathroom to get changed.

 

On the 21st of November, 2016, at 7:22am, local constabularies found the body of a potter dumped in a ditch at Varzy, half an hour’s drive from Eugnes. He had been stabbed to death and was missing a total of seven digits.

 

 

 


	12. Sudden Impact

 

#  **Sudden Impact**

On the 15th of July 2012, at 1:12pm, Kuon Hizuri was sat in a greasy diner in the centre of Moscow. He was eating a lukewarm knisch with a slightly-less-clean-than-optimal spoon and wondering where the hell his companions were.

His cutlery clinked thoughtfully as he made his way through the food, adding to a melange of noises that permeated the establishment. Two rows behind him a couple were having a heated argument on their rent. To his left a child was having a meltdown about a dropped desert. On the bench to his right a drunkard was badly reciting the Odyssey, whilst a barmaid anxiously watched him from the corner of her eyes and quietly pocketed money from the till. Meanwhile the radio, unseen but ever present, was loudly announcing the weather forecast. All of these noises culminated in a single incomprehensible babble that washed over Kuon as he sat alone, watching the people pass by outside.

 

It was a sunny day. The streams of bodies flitting past were all clad in bright colours which blended into each other in a garish and confident statement of youth. All, that is, except two which were now heading to the door of the bistro. One wore suit trousers and a mangled denim jacket, the other a scarlet summer dress which choked under a leather jacket.

 

“There he is!” the shorter one said upon opening the door, making his way to the boy’s table.

“You took your bloody time!” exclaimed Kuon as his two mentors settled down opposite him “What the hell were you up to?”

 

Tina, still tall, elegant and composed, twisted a lock of golden hair around her fingers as she scanned for a waiter.

 

“Do forgive him, he did have something rather important to do...”

 

She noticed a waitress two tables away and made a small, polite smile as she raised her hand to seek service. Her long fingers extended gracefully upwards towards the ceiling lights, calmly signalling, and something caught the light.

There! A sharp glimmer of gold caught his eye once more as she retracted her hand.

 

No, it couldn’t be... Kuon frantically whipped his head back to look at Rick. His hands were on the table, neatly showcasing a golden band on his right ring finger.

 

“When did-”

“Well it’s _about_ time you caught on.” Rick excitedly chuckled “We’re finally engaged!”

 

She parted her vermillion lips to laugh and then gently poked her fiancé.

 

“He’s a hopeless romantic, our Rick. Absolutely head over heels...”

“And don’t you know it...” Rick replied, nuzzling her gently.

 

Kuon, mildly discomforted by this sudden and intense public display of affection, coughed into his hands awkwardly. Rick pulled back, and a characteristically disapproving smirk reappeared on Tina’s face.

 

“Okay, but just guess-” she said “Just guess where and when he proposed.”

 

Kuon set down his fork and shrugged.

 

“Behind a dumpster! This man had the nerve to propose to the daughter of the second biggest gang in Moscow _behind a dumpster_. Talk about lack of social awareness... Anyway-” she gazed dreamily at the simple ring on her finger “It’s a good job I love him...”

 

*******

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 5:05am, Kyoko Mogami found another white envelope on her window sill. She snatched it, crumpled it, and shoved it under a floorboard with a growing pile of others, before steadying herself and leaving for the bathroom.

 

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 6:15am, Kyoko Mogami was frying pancakes and listening to the radio. The small red plastic box was on low volume, and set to a channel that Mrs. Berger had taken to listening to on quiet afternoons. The two middle-aged hosts were currently talking about the 80s revival, and wistfully reminiscing about their youth.

 

“Now,” said one of them, “This next one is proving very popular with the kids. It’s a song that I used to listen to when I was a teenager, so I’m very pleased to see it on the rise again.”

“Yeah, yeah” chipped in the other, “This is just a great song, it’s about love, remorse and the obsessive feelings of a lover moving on. Well, here’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ by Sting, covered by Sho Fuwa!”

 

Kyoko felt herself freeze into hypertension as a familiar voice began to croon into the silent air. Her hand, gripping a spatula, was held stationary above the pan, shaking, as the song progressed. Just as the chorus came on, a hissing noise became apparent as smoke began to rise from the burning pancake.

 

“Every breath you take, _I’ll be watching you_ ~~” the red box sang.

 

Without thinking, Kyoko’s arm came down with the approximate force of two tonnes of falling lead. In a split second, a crackling noise was followed by static, followed by silence as a thousand red plastic shards flew into the air and wires and circuit boards were snapped in two. Black smoke was now billowing from the pan, and sparks were beginning to fly from the destroyed piece of technology.

 

_‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God-’_

She rushed over to the sink, using her left shoulder to switch on the tap, her left hand to dunk the burning pan under the cold water and her right hand to pull the radio’s power supply. As she stood, breathing heavily, between a screaming pan of steam and the obliterated remains of a piece of her employers’ property, she wondered how she was going to explain what had happened.

 

*******

On the 17th of August 2016 at 3:02pm, Kyoko Mogami had five minutes left. She was practically falling over herself as she rushed down the familiar linoleum service stairs to the kitchens, suitcase in tow. When she reached the open door, panting, she found herself directly confronted by Okami.

 

“Kyoko dear- what’s- dear your arms!”

 

Tears of frustration, acknowledgement and desperation filled Kyoko’s eyes as she choked out words between gasps and gulps.

 

“I don’t- I don’t have much time. Thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I’ll never- I’ll never forget it!”

 

Taisho set down a can of caviar that he had been arranging as an hors-d’oeuvre. Without hesitation he walked to a drawer and barked at his wife.

 

“Attend to her arms! Hurry!”

 

She rushed over to a first-aid kit nailed to a wall and pulled out disinfectant and bandages. Determinedly pushing up the teen’s sleeves, she began dressing the wounds with speed and accuracy, despite yelps of pain as clinical alcohol seeped into the cuts.

Taisho, meanwhile, sorted through the knives in his cutting block until he came to a large but thin blade that was elegantly curved towards the end. A sushi knife. He grabbed some dessert-packing paper from the counter and set about carefully wrapping it in innumerable layers of soft protection.

 

On the 17th of August 2016 at 3:05pm, Kyoko Mogami had two minutes. She stood, arms bandaged and suitcase by her feet, as Taisho looked severely down and handed her his package.

 

<“I don’t know where you’re going, Kyoko-chan,”> he said <“Or why. But I wish you what we’ve always wished you: the best. Stay safe..”>

 

He pinched his nose bridge and turned away, covering his sniffling with a look of resolve. His wife stepped forward.

 

“Kyoko-chan. Kyoko-chan we-” she faltered and began to well up “we love you, child. We always have. And, god knows, we don’t understand what’s happening right now, but- we love you. All these years, you’ve been like a daughter to us, and I never want you to forget that. Good luck, my dear… Good luck”

 

She briefly locked the girl in a tight embrace, then pulled back as she watched her disappear through the back entrance. Her shrinking silhouette, black, vanishing into the light, appeared to be swallowed by the heavenly glow of the outside world.

 

*******

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 7:02am, Odette Berger was stood in the entrance to her kitchen, absolutely astonished.

 

At first, nothing had seemed wrong. Breakfast was on the table as usual, accompanied by a pot of herbal tea. The dishcloths were arranged on the drawer handles as usual. The china was neatly dusted and arranged in the cabinet as usual. But no- there, on the counter, a bag of green and red.

 

Her carer turned from the cutlery draw and saw her, then began launching into apologies. Two minutes into the rambling declarations of sorrow and remorse, Mrs. Berger had still gained no idea of the current situation and decided to cut her off.

 

“Kyoohko deerie whatever’s the matter? Ah canny see what yer in such a huff aboot!”

 

The girl straightened her back and made eye contact.

 

“The radio. I broke it.”

 

Mrs. Berger looked at the bag of debris on the counter and then back to the girl.

 

“You did? Cor blimey, tha’ must ‘ave taken some doin’, tha’ was good plastic frem tha sixties, tha’ was! How d’ye do it?”

“I, um, I tripped…”

 

The teen was no longer making eye contact. She was looking ashamedly at her feet, head hanging low.

 

“Wehll,” she said, settling down to breakfast “Ah suppose we were needin’ a new one anyweh now weren’t we? That’s quite alright deerie. Let’s eat now, come on.”

 

Later, as she watched Kyoko clearing up, her eyes flicked over to Pierre. He made eye contact, then nodded ever so slightly.

So she was right, she thought; something _was_ going on.

 

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 4:16pm, Kyoko Mogami walked into _Takagi and Son_ to place an order for a new radio. Holy the Rottweiler, she was pleased to notice, wasn’t around, and Reino was quietly napping on the counter.

Deciding not to disturb him, she shuffled around the shelves quietly, listening to the store radio play the afternoon news as she picked up the ingredients for a pot au feu.

 

 _“Breaking news!”_ it said in the quiet and controlled voice of a reporter _“Administrative politician Alstair Flantier was found stabbed to death today. The police are currently looking into the suspicious circumstances of his death, but will not confirm his involvement in the illegal letting of a condemned building in the city centre. More to follow shortly.”_

Kyoko twitched slightly. She quickly paced over to the counter and woke up the sleeping shopkeeper by dumping a bag of groceries by his head.

 

“Reino, Reino wake up! I need to buy these and place an order for a cheap radio.”

“Hmm? Oh,” he grumbled “Kyokes, what’s the rush?”

“It’s really nothing, but could you please be quick?”

 

Looking at his friend suspiciously, he took her money in exchange for a receipt and some change, and then made a note of her order.

 

“That’s all then,” he exclaimed bemusedly “have a nice-”

 

But Kyoko was already gone. She was rushing across the square to _Tsuruga Veterinarian_.

 

*******

On the 20th of July 2012, Kuon Hizuri was sat in a tattoo artist’s chair. His parents were sat anxiously next to him.

 

{“Are you sure you want this?”} inquired his mother {“Quite sure?”}

 

Kuon sighed.

 

{“Yes”}

 

His father grimaced and nervously adjusted his collar.

 

{“What’ll it be, then? Flowers like your old dad?”}

 

The teen looked down at the gold ring that he was fiddling with. A flash of emotion crossed his face before a deadly calm set in.

 

{“Flowers and a snake.”}

{“A snake? That’s rather unorthodox, you know.”}

 

The boy finished unbuttoning his shirt and burned a pair of glistening jade eyes into the near-identical ones of Kuu Hizuri.

 

{“You’re into those great tales of romance, aren’t you?”}

{“Yes, but what does that-”}

{“You know Romeo and Juliet, then?”}

{“ _Yes,_ ”} Kuu said, exasperated, {“but what-”}

 

Kuon turned his eyes to a clock on the wall.

 

_“Oh! Serpent heart, hid with a flowering face”_

*******

 

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 4:17pm, Kyoko Mogami pushed the door to _Tsuruga Veterinarian_ open hastily, briefly greeted the vet and his secretary behind the desk, and then asked if she could check her email.

 

“Of course. We’re having a quiet day anyway.”

 

Kyoko deposited her coat and groceries on a waiting room chair and patiently waited for the computer to wake up.

 

As the loading bar appeared on screen, she turned back to Yashiro.

 

“Isn’t it always a quiet day? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a customer in this waiting room.”

 

The brunet behind the desk looked up.

 

“Yes, well, that’s because we’ve _never_ had a customer in this waiting room. I think most of them don’t even know where this place is! Ren _insists_ on only doing callouts, so we mostly rely on word of mouth and the landline for appointments.”

“Oh. Does it work well?”

“I’m pleased to say that it does. We haven’t had a slip-up in a long time.”

 

A pinging noise brought her attention back to her loaded email inbox. There was only one unread email. It was from Sally.

 

Clicking on the message, Kyoko waited agonizingly as it gradually opened. When the screen filled, the page was almost blank. Almost. At the bottom, three words stood, alone and in bold.

**_‘I did it’_ **

Kyoko was reeling. Her head was swimming with visions of Taisho, Sally, and the knife.

 

This was her fault, wasn’t it? She’d murdered a man. A bad man, of course, but now a dead man nonetheless. What was going to happen now? Was this the end of the line? Would Taisho connect the dots leading back to her?

 

She gripped the back of a chair. She could feel the blood roaring in her ears as she fought to steady herself.

 

“Ms. Mogami?”

 

She needed to get out of here.

 

Marching to the door, she rushed into the deep blue and the cold of a winter night. Soft bundles of white were beginning to tumble down from the heavens as she stood, heaving and shivering, in the darkened square.

She felt herself crumple downwards as she began to sob. Nothing had changed. She was trapped once more. Trapped in a cage that she had built herself.

 

A quick set of footsteps crunched towards her from behind in the newly settled snow. There was a sharp and sudden pain at the back of her skull.

And then Kyoko felt absolutely nothing. Her world had descended into blackness.

 

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 4:23pm, Ren Tsuruga picked up the coat and bags that had been left on a chair and decided to pursue the Mogami girl. He had only caught a glimpse of it, but the expression she had made as she left had been all too familiar. It was the expression of a boy shaking the lifeless body of his mentor. It was the expression of a boy screaming at the sky as the heavens thundered and rain poured down. It was expression of a world that had been completely destroyed.

 

On the 22nd of November 2016 at 4:24pm, Ren Tsuruga stood alone and confused in the snowy square. The only thing beside him in the growing obscurity of night was a set of footprints and a puddle of deep red that melted and bled into its bed of soft crystals.

 

*******

On the 23rd of November 2016 at 7:32am, Kyoko Mogami was having a nightmare.  

 

She stood in a field of snow, gazing down at a single red peony that burst forth from the white like a bullet from a gun. As she looked down, the centre of the flower appeared as an obsidian void. It sucked her in, and now she was falling, falling for seven days and seven nights to the bottom of this pitch-dark hole.

 

Her fingers felt the cool smoothness of metal in her hands. A knife. The room filled with water and a red fish stared into her soul. It became engorged, red scales creaking and flaking as its eyes swelled out of their sockets, bursting like bubbles and floating in streams of red to the surface above.

 

She drowned and her screams became letters. They saturated her senses with pure, glistening white that burned like liquid luminescence into the back of her skull.

A red radio whined and sang as she felt herself pushed back. It exploded with a fanfare of Angelic chorus that wracked her body with pain.

 

“Every breath you take” sang the angels from on high “I’ll be watching you”

 

She tasted salt and sweat and drying iron of blood.

 

Her day of judgment had come.

 

On the 23rd of November 2016 at 7:37am, Kyoko Mogami woke up in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting a long time for this. We're so close to the truth now.  
> Raise your hand if you know who the stalker is. If I've done this right, that should be rather a lot of you.


	13. Path of Least Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to have to add a trigger warning here again, for violence, death and general nastiness of a sexual nature. It was really hard and uncomfortable to write some of the scenes in this chapter, so I feel it's important not to rush straight in.

# Path of Least Resistance

On the 22nd of November, 2016, at 10:23pm, Ren Tsuruga was shaken from his musings by a phone call. Turning away from the window that he had been watching the snow through, he picked up the white receiver and absentmindedly read the spines of nearby books.

 

“Ren Tsuruga speaking, how may I help you?”

“Quit that will you, it’s Yukihito!”

 

There was a tone of urgency to his voice that set Ren at unease.

 

“May I ask what the purpose of this call is?”

“I just got a call from Kanae. The Bergers called her to see if Kyoko was at the Kotonami farmstead. She hasn’t come home.”

 

He felt his stomach plummet. This was bad. This was really, really bad.

 

“Wait, there’s another call on the line from Kanae. I’m going to hang up. I’ll call you back”

 

Sure enough, there was a click and then a long beeping noise before the line went silent. He heavily placed the phone back down and then put a large palm to his forehead. Closing his eyes he hesitantly leaned forwards.

He had been through a lot in life. That, of course, had always been certain. But he didn’t think he’d ever quite felt this way before. His heart rate was beginning to rise. His head was spinning. His guts felt as though they were made of lead.

Was he coming down with a fever? His doctor’s persona fought in vain to deny knowledge that he couldn’t escape. By now had read far too many of the books around him to feign obliviousness; had Ovid not made it clear in _Pyramus and Thisbe_? Were _Scheherazade and Shahryar_ not ample example enough?

 No, it was indisputable at this point: the Mogami girl meant a lot more to him than he had let on.

 

The phone began to ring once more and he snatched it perfectly without looking up from the stand. He was surprised to find that it was Kanae at the other end of the line this time.

 

“The Bergers want a meeting at theirs ASAP. Be there or be a fucking terrible person, Mr. Gooey eyes.” She snapped before abruptly hanging up.

 

Fifteen minutes later Ren found himself stood in the Berger front room with a mug of hot tea and a veritable assortment of characters from across the village. Yashiro and Kanae were both stood on his right, which he supposed was perfectly logical, but to his left were sat old Mr. Chapdelaine and Canelle from Tronsanges. Mrs. Berger had just rattled into the room with a tray of assorted biscuits when the doorbell rang.

 

“That must be Reino”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it” said Kanae, rising from a slouch and gliding to the front door.

 

From behind the muffling of the corridor walls, the front door could be heard opening, followed by Reino being loudly berated for not immediately removing his muddy footwear.

 

The pair shuffled into the gathering and Odette began to speak.

 

“Now,” she said, quivering slightly, “I knoohw what yer thinkin’. Ye think that maybe I’m joohst over-reactin’ and that she’s run away. Ye think that joohst because we dinny ken where she came frem or what she’s been through, she must ‘ave been a rotten apple all along. But ye doohn’t know our Kyoohko like we do. This isn’t like her at all. There must be something foul afoot, because she’d never leave withoot telling.”

“More to the point,” her husband added quietly from a dark corner “She can’t have run away. I’ve checked her room and all of her belongings are in order. She can’t have disappeared without any money or adequate clothing, it’s irrational.”

“I agree” posited Reino, pulling a receipt out of his jeans pocket “When she came for the groceries she wasn’t wearing a thick coat, and I’ve looked over today’s receipts: she definitely bought the ingredients to make dinner for at least three.”

 

Ren ran his hands through his hair and felt his heart sink to a new, abysmal low.

 

“I don’t want to sound dramatic here, but…” he felt the words linger at the back of his throat as though their thixotropic syllables were unimpressed by his lack of momentum “as I was walking here, across the square, I noticed an irregular patch in the snow. I don’t want to alarm you… but… it is my medically informed opinion that it was blood.”

 

The temperature of the room plunged.

 

*******

On the 23rd of November 2016 at 7:38am, Kyoko Mogami became intensely aware of the dark. She was also keenly conscious that the bed that she was asleep in was far too comfortable to be her own. Rolling over onto her side, she bundled warm blankets around her and groggily rubbed her legs together.

This was the first sign that something was wrong. Not only were her legs bare, they were smooth. Kyoko hadn’t shaved in a long time.

The second sign, then, was Kyoko’s apparel. Reaching her right arm, which felt strangely heavy, down to her abdomen and upper legs, she felt a loose and smooth fabric. Rubbing it between her fingers, she decided that it was a single thin layer of silk. Along her collar bone she felt a ruffle of lace. Her back felt strangely exposed. Her pants were somehow uncomfortable.

Shifting slowly into an upright sitting position on the end of the bed, her head began to spin. Her skull was throbbing and aching viciously. When she brought a hand up to nurse it, she once again felt that they were unusually heavy. Then something jingled.

 

**_Clink._ **

****

It was this noise that brought her immediately and painfully to her senses at breakneck speed.

 

**_Clink._ **

 

Kyoko threw off the covers and stood up. She tried walking forwards into the darkness, but felt herself pulled back after a metre or so. Her right hand was immovable. She tugged on it. It wouldn’t come along with the rest of her body. She tried to move it side to side. It swung restrainedly. She shuffled backwards. The arm became loose once more. Kyoko fought to calm her breathing. She knew what this meant. She was in chains.

 

_‘Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodwhat’sgoingonohgodohmygodohgod’_

The implications of the change of clothes, on their own, were horrifying. But this… this was beginning to reach a scale that was incomprehensible. A scale that she didn’t want to have to comprehend.

 

As she stood in what she presumed to be the centre of the room, breathing fast, her eyes began to adjust and her ears slowly pulled faint sounds from her surroundings.

The room was quite large and circular in shape. The walls angled gently inwards, and a staircase snaked upwards on the side opposite the only furnishings: the bed she had been sleeping on, and a wicker chair. A small door was tantalizingly close, just out of reach, just by the stairs. Using her fingers to follow the chain on the leather bindings around her right wrist to their source, she found that they were affixed to a plate on the wall next to the head of the bed.

 The silence around her was almost perfect. All she could hear was her own deep breaths and a gentle, rhythmic whoosing.

_‘Take stock of the situation. Take stock. Calm’_

She walked back to sit on the bed. All she could do now, she decided, was wait. Cautiously laying back down again, she closed her eyes and warily drifted off to sleep.

 

**_Blam._ **

****

Kyoko was woken up, god knew how much later, by the sudden advent of lights switching on and a heavy hand falling with a jarring **clang** onto the metal bedframe.

 

“Rise and shine! Oh, but not so fast, you’ll get a headache… I must have hit you harder than I thought.”

 

Kyoko blinked furiously in the blinding light. When her eyes adjusted, her eyes widened. The sheen of a nervous sweat began to appear on her forehead. Her pulse skyrocketed. The male figure leaning over her smirked in self-satisfied silence.

 

“You… No… It can’t- What’s- what’s going on here?”

 

He leaned in close. His warm breath plastered her skin and sent shivers down her spine.

 

“Now now. Do calm down.” A large hand bridged the diminishing gap between them to forcefully stroke her jawline. He leaned into her ear and whispered “We’re going to get to know each other _very intimately_ from now on”

 

Kyoko froze and thawed in the space of half a second. She used all of her body weight to shove her right shoulder directly into the assaulter’s ribcage.

 

“Get away from me!”

 

He picked himself inelegantly off the floor and, unblinking, slammed her into the wall. Having incapacitated her limbs, he grabbed her mop of auburn hair and tugged it sharply back. Every follicle on Kyoko’s head was on fire. Her neck was bent into a crook that couldn’t support itself. She held back a yelp as he threatened to pull it back further.

 

“You’re obviously misinterpreting the situation here” he sneered “ _I_ make the rules, _you_ follow them. There aren’t any other options.”

 

 

Later (and she could not specify how much later, as time was already starting to become the ultimate abstract and unknown), Kyoko discovered that the staircase opposite her bed led to a small upper floor that had been converted into a makeshift bathroom.

 Her journey there had been made not by her own choice, but by that of her captor, who had dragged her, kicking and screaming, agonizingly up each step. He then punched her sharply in the stomach and bound her hands and feet as she curled, reeling, on the floor.

Kyoko had felt a large hand trail down her back. It grasped the zipper of her dress and began to roughly pull it down. She froze stiff as her silk clothing was forcefully removed and she was shoved under a jet of lukewarm water. She couldn’t move. She felt restricted, compressed. She desperately wanted to scream and cry, but something about the hands roaming her skin mortified the words on her tongue.

It wasn’t the violation of dignity or the humiliating loss of agency that eventually made her cry. It was the warmth of his body on hers. His hands, to her mind, should have been pallid and cold, as they always were in gothic fiction. They should have been an obvious affront to all things kind and human, an easy metaphor for the heart. Instead, they were warm. They were warm because, despite Kyoko’s most desperate prayers, her abductor was still human. A human being with thoughts and feelings and, she had always assumed, a sense of morality. And this human, living and breathing and warm, was hurting her. Knew he was hurting her.

 

Her tears, warm and salty, did not amuse her captor in the slightest. After he had washed her, dried her, and once again dressed her in a white nightie, and she was still crying, he became impatient. He firmly took hold of her shoulder and slapped her soundly round the cheeks.

 

“Stop crying. The tears will stain the silk.”

*******

 

On the 30th of November 2016 at 3:32pm Kyoko Mogami had been missing for one week. Ren Tsuruga was sat in his apartment watching snow fall from the ashen sky contemplating the subject that had been on his mind rather a lot recently: the Mogami girl.

It was rather appropriate, he reflected, that the weather had taken a turn for the worse once she’d gone. Just as the metaphorical light in his life had vanished, the literal one had too.

The snow had been unrelenting. It accumulated as a frozen saran wrap over what had, to Ren’s mind, never been a particularly pleasant landscape, even at the best of times. Just as it clung to the houses and the cobblestones, the cold stuck to people’s souls. Many spent most of the day inside, sheltering from the elements, and from each other.

The news of Kyoko’s disappearance had spread like wildfire, only significantly colder and far, far more destructive. The people of the village were now shy and distrusting. He supposed that this sort of thing was natural, after all. They knew that someone within their ranks (or at least, someone _likely_ within their ranks; Ren had his own suspicions) had the capacity for taboo and violence. It could be their neighbor, or their friends, or anyone at all… doubt prevailed as uncertainty ran high.

The wind, too, had been sinister and ever-present. Once, when he had been walking in the woods, he could have sworn that the wind rushing around the creaking windmill on the ridge had sounded distinctly like a long, drawn-out scream. He had considered investigating, then drew back. He knew that at this point, his overly paranoid poetic suppositions were beginning to jeopardize his good sense. He was sure that no one else was hearing screams in the wind and tears in the wobbly floorboards. Quite certain, in fact, that nobody else was seeing blood in their morning coffee or hearing cries of help in the scratch of a ballpoint pen. He was overthinking. Worse, he was under-performing at work. The increasingly pessimistic wanderings of his mind were systematically dismantling the careful acting and sensibility that he had built up over the years. The constant uncertainty and the feeling that he could have saved her if only he’d been faster were whittling away at his soul, chunk by chunk, memory by memory.

 

 

It is a little know fact that when a snowstorm is powerful enough, the clashing of storm clouds is powerful enough to induce an electric potential of millions of volts that discharges in glaring bolts which instantly evaporate the falling snowflakes around them. This phenomenon makes itself clear not only through a deafening clap and blinding flash, it also has the added peculiarity of hissing as frozen water sublimates in the local atmosphere. 

In any case, this occurrence, to which Ren Tsuruga had previously been blissfully ignorant, struck suddenly and without warning on the 30th of November 2016 at 3:35pm as he sat at the window. As the painful light singed itself into his eyeballs, he felt himself slip inescapably into memories of long ago.

 

On the 18th of July 2012 Kuon Hizuri was chasing a pickpocket with his mentor, Rick.

It wasn’t that the Hizuri mafia gang was opposed to pickpocketing. No, it was quite the opposite. They approved of pickpocketing whole-heartedly, but only when they were the ones doing it. So when Kuu had noticed a spate of unclaimed thefts in the downtown district, he had absentmindedly assigned his son to take care of it, with some vague explanation that he should be “learning the ropes” and “practicing what he was good at”.

 

Tina had stood patiently in the Red Square for no less than two and a half humid, sticky hours before the thief struck. Then, in an instant, her fake Louis Vuitton was disappearing into a crowd of Chinese tourists in the hands of a man in a black baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses.

 

“Stop, thief!” she cried out, melodramatically pointing at the receding figure to guide Ren and Rick, who had been laying in wait.

 

They sprinted off, leaping bollards and skirting pedestrians. Tina started to follow, but found herself considerably lagging behind. She came to a stop outside a florist and, between pants, exclaimed “Agh, fuck this!” before slipping off her stiletto heels and then dashing off barefoot across the burning pavement at a pace that evenly matched theirs.

 

The air was stifling as the pair up ahead closed in. The grey summer sky exerted a malevolent pressure that prognosticated some hidden doom. The target was leading them through uncomfortable turns and blind alleys. He was also leading them uphill. With a scramble and a crash, he forced open the service door of an abandoned hotel and began to climb the stairs.  Rick and Kuon gave chase, legs screaming in protest as they advanced upon the summit. 32 floors later, they burst onto the open roof of the building, panting for breath, and found the target idling near the edge.

 

“We’ve-” panted Rick “We’ve got you cornered. There’s nowhere you can run.”

“Yeah,” added Kuon, in a slightly less cool manner “hurry up and surrender”

 

The thief turned to face them. Reaching a shaking hand into his jeans pocket, he pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Rick.

 

In that moment, time seemed to stand still. Kuon was stood higher up than he’d ever been. Moscow sprawled below him in a multicoloured patchwork and a cool breeze rippled through his sticky hair. The noises of the street drifted indistinctly up from far, far below, reminding him that what he was doing was too detached from the ordinary mundanity of his everyday life to ever go back. Here, on the peak of the mountain, he had reached the end of normality.

 

Oh, how he had wished that time would continue to stand still. How he had prayed that time would slow just cinematically enough, as he had seen in so many films before, for some miraculous act of divine intervention to divert the path of the bullet.

But the gods were cruel. The bullet travelled bitingly fast.

 

**_Bang._ **

 

Rick collapsed into a limp puddle of red. The shooter disappeared.

 

“Rick- Rick speak to me- Rick!”

 

Kuon went to cradle the limp body just in time fo the heavens to unleash a summer storm. It became impossible to tell whether the world was blurring into a kaleidoscope of grey and red because of the tears in his eyes or the torrential downpour around him

 

Behind a clap of thunder and the roaring of the rain, a gentle gasp snapped Kuon’s eyes to the stairwell entrance. Tina was stood, one hand clapped over her mouth and eyes nearly falling out of their sockets, in the doorway. Her knees buckled and her bare and bleeding feet left the ground as she feel onto her knees, sobbing.

 

“You… How could you… ?”

 

Her eyes were now fixed on the teen in an unflinching glare. She wrenched a rickety metal pipe from the wall behind her and began to swing it like a bat as she staggered to her feet and advanced, sobbing, towards Kuon.

 

“Tina, no! This isn’t-”

 

He was cut off by a shriek that pierced his soul and shattered his heart.

 

“ **MURDERER**!”

 

 

What followed, as the two stared at each other in shock and in horror, was silence. Silence, as thunder growled and rain pattered, and a dead man lay between them. Aeons had passed by the time that Tina stirred again.

She lifted the steel pipe in her hands above her head and stood looking down on the crouching teen.

 

“ _I’ll kill y-”_

 

But before she could bring the weapon down on his head and swiftly increase the number of deceased, two clouds, 20 thousand feet above her, clashed. In a statistical improbability that would elude statisticians for years to come, the billion volts generated above Moscow that day found that the path of least resistance was directly to the steel conductor in Tina’s hands. With a scream and the sickening smell of burning flesh, she became enveloped in crackling, burning blue light that filled Kuon’s senses before everything faded to black.

 

*******

On the 5th of December 2016 at 12:14am Kyoko Mogami was alone. She was learning to appreciate being alone, because facing the other possibilities was unthinkable.

 

So here she was sat, staring into the darkness, passing time. Time, she found, was the one thing that she could always be certain to have in her prison. Without clocks, or windows, it became a nameless, horrific thing that crouched in the corners and watched her with uncaring eyes. Time. There was so much of it, this abstract terror, and yet never enough before her captor came back.  

 

She adjusted the uncomfortable lacy lingerie that she was wearing and then jerked slightly. Cocking one ear, she froze attentively as she heard a set of footsteps approach. The soft crunch of the snow drew rhythmically closer, and a dog barked.

 

_‘Shit’_

                                                 

She pulled the covers over her head and laid down, eyes closed, just as the door opened, letting in a gust of cold air and the dreaded enforcer of her misery.

 

“Get up. I know you’re not asleep.”

 

Knowing better than to fight back, she sat up and locked eyes with him in a trembling stare. Something was different today. He was less violent, less volatile. Instead of forcing himself on her as he usually did, he positioned the chair opposite the bed and sat down.

 

“I’ll let you ask two questions”

 

Relief flooded her. He was in a good mood today. Her bruises would have time to fade.

But this was a loaded statement. She only had two questions, potentially ever, and she had to ask them both now. So many were already on the tip of her tongue. What did he want? How had he done this? Where was she?

 

She noticed a hint of irritation in his purple eyes and flinched. She needed to speak now.

 

“Reino…” her voice still cracked, even after all of this time and all of this pain “Reino, why are you doing this? I thought we were friends. I thought you wanted the best for me.”

 

Reino smiled sardonically. He fiddled disinterestedly with his shirt buttons.

 

“Was-” Kyoko ventured cautiously “Was it Miroku?”

 

 This snapped his attention back up. He straightened his back and leaned forwards, smirking.

 

“Ah. That is what ye’d think, ain’t it? _Poor misunderstood teen gets a bit un’inged after one of ‘is mates kicks it. It’s not ‘is fault reelly, ‘e’s just in a bad place mentally_ ” he stopped to laugh “You’re missing the bigger picture here. _I_ killed Miroku. I held his head down in that sodden field, waitin’ for ‘is kicking to stop. I fucking ruined a pair o’ jeans s’well.”

 

Kyoko shrank back into herself. Now, more than ever, she didn’t understand.

 

“Oh, ye wanna know why, do ye? Wanna know why I bumped off me own friend? T’s simple reelly: he tried te get ye before I could. That day, the day I killed him, I could tell that he’d roofied your drink and was just itching to get you on yer own afterwards. Well, I wasn’t ‘aving that. I ‘ad to teach ‘im a lesson, thin out the competition a little.”

 

Kyoko thought back to the salty drink and the night she couldn’t remember. She held back a shiver of revulsion and swallowed the heaviness at the back of her throat.

 

“Why- why me?”

 

To her shock he started laughing.

 

“Ah,” he said “I knew this one would come up. You think you’re special, don’t you? You think I chose to fuck you because you’re pretty and mysterious and damaged just like me.”

 

He snorted.

 

“No, you were just convenient. I’ve always wanted to properly mess someone up. When I was younger, I would practice on animals. But the thing is, farmers start to notice when sheep go missing. You just can’t keep it up. For a while I was considerin’ your little chum Kanae. She’s cute, ain’t she? And if that didn’t work, I could pick a girl from the next village. But then you came along. It was so… opportune. Nobody knows who you are, where you came from… there’s no one to miss you when you’re gone.”

 

He stood up and walked over to the bed. As he gently placed one hand on her chest and began unbuttoning his shirt with the other, he snickered.

 

“Poor Kyoko. For you, this isn’t even the first time.”

 

*******

On the 16th of August 2016 at 11:32pm Kyoko Mogami was sat at her desk reading when she heard her door open and close. Delighted, she set down the book and skipped over to greet the boy taking off his shoes in the hallway.

 

“Sho!”

“Kyoko…”

 

He slurred his words slightly. His breath smelled of alcohol.

He leaned forwards and placed his arms around her waist, pulling her close. His head was heavy as it rested on her shoulders.

 

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?”

 

He turned slowly to place a warm, wet kiss on her neck. As Kyoko stood absolutely frozen in place, he trailed it upwards to her ear.

 

“Kyoko… I love you…”

 

She liquefied. She felt so happy she could die! There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many secrets she wanted to share. He was finally reciprocating all the love she had given him, finally-

 

She was cut off by his warm lips pressing firmly onto hers. She tried, as she had read in so many books, to melt into the kiss. She was surprised to find that she couldn’t. His kiss was too forceful, too overpowering. His tongue was already in her mouth.

She tried to gently maneuver herself out of his embrace, but his grip around her waist was too tight too escape. He leaned in, his body pressing closely against hers.

 

On the 16th of August 2016 at 11:36pm, Kyoko Mogami was still a socially inept teenager. She credited herself, however, that she was not inept enough to miss that Sho was coercing her into the bedroom, or that he had locked the door behind him. She had watched a sufficient number of romcoms to know exactly where things were going, and also to know that she didn’t like it.

 

“Sho…” She broke away, hot and flushed, just as he had started to unbutton her shirt. “Let’s not…”

 

His hands continued to explore her body. She gasped as he slid one hand underneath her bra.

 

“Kyoko… Don’t you love me?”

“I do!” she stuttered “I do love you, Sho, but I… I don’t want this…”

 

His cool blue eyes looked down into hers. There was something about his slight frown and the tightening of his grip on her wrist that felt commanding.

 

“Don’t you love me?”

 

Kyoko felt her stomach churn as he began to nibble on her neck. When she was pushed onto the bed, something very much like guilt stopped her from protesting.

 

That night she spent a lot of time watching the ceiling.

 

*******

 

On the 13th of December 2016 at 12:02pm Yukihito Yashiro was running over the clinic accounts at the front desk. He was bored enough with this task that the approaching footsteps in the snow were keenly clear to him, and it was not a surprise when the door opened.

What was a surprise, however, was the identity of the visitor.

 

He stood immediately up from his seat, slamming his hands on the desk.

 

“You! You’ve got a lot of nerve turning up here-”

“Yeah, yeah…” Waved off the blond teen in the entrance absentmindedly “You seen Kyoko around by any chance?”

 

Yashiro’s mouth dropped in disbelief.

“Is this some sort of sick joke? This isn’t funny at all”

“Hey hey! What’s the big deal? Watcha got against me?”

 

At that precise moment Ren appeared from the surgery door. With a smile as cold as ice he glared down at Sho and tersely stated:

“Mr. Fuwa, Kyoko has been missing for twenty days now. We would appreciate it if you took this matter seriously.”

 

Unexpectedly, the teen went limp. His eyes widened and a small tremor could be observed in his left hand.

“Are you serious? You have no idea where she is?”

 

“No” the two men replied in unison. The accumulating hatred exuded by their smiles was unmistakable.

 

Panicked, the teen dashed out into the snow, leaving behind a bitter atmosphere and, unbeknownst to him, a bottle of perfume.

 

*******

On the 17th of August 2016 at 9:13am, Kyoko Mogami woke up alone. She felt heavy and achy uncomfortably sticky as she brushed her teeth and showered.

Turning the water temperature as high as it would go, she took a bar of carboxylic soap and began to scrub hard at her skin. She scrubbed harder and harder, her skin becoming red and raw, but the feeling of sticky uncleanliness would not leave her. She felt terrible.

 

She ate breakfast alone that day, as usual. Kyoko stared down at a plate of croissants and suddenly lost her appetite. She wanted to cry, and felt like puking.

She was startled when a thin, suited figure appeared from the shadows of the empty breakfast hall. It was Itsuki, Mrs. Fuwa’s personal manager.

 

“Mrs. Fuwa would like a word with you in her office as soon as possible”

 

Kyoko turned around to reply, but by that time her interlocutor had already vanished into thin air.   

 

On the 17th of August 2016 at 10:22am, Kyoko Mogami was stood opposite her foster mother and scared completely stiff. Behind Mrs. Fuwa, a glass wall revealed the sprawling depths of Paris with the controlled triumph of a penthouse location. The tiny dots of people far below seemed to Kyoko to be a warning that anything that came this high up would inevitably come crashing down.

 

“Kyoko” said Mrs. Fuwa, adjusting the position of a glass paperweight on her desk “I’m calling you here because we received a complaint about you from the guests in the room next door. Would you like to hazard a guess why?”

“No, Mrs. Fuwa”

 

There was silence for a brief moment. Then the older woman flew into a rage.

 

“I got complaints, you ungrateful little _slut_ , about the noise of your nighttime activities! I can’t believe I bothered raising such an utterly _shameless_ child as you.”

 

Kyoko opened her mouth to protest. This only seemed to incense her verbal attacker further. Mrs. Fuwa picked up the glass paperweight and hurled it cleanly at the teen.

Instinctively, her hands whipped upwards to protect her head as the trinket shattered into hundreds of sharp pieces that cut her skin.

 

“Get out of my sight. You’re to have left the premises by the time that I return for my afternoon meetings. You’re no daughter of mine, and I’ll have nothing to do with you from now on.”

 

Kyoko, arms bleeding profusely, was forcefully dragged out of the room by two bodyguards. She was too stunned to react.

 

*******

On the 7th of December 2016, the body of a farmer was found in a ditch only 10 miles from Eugnes. It was missing three fingers.

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 11:59am Ren Tsuruga was sat in his living room once again contemplating the snow. In his hands he was turning over a small bottle shaped like a swan.

 

On the 20th of December 2016 at 12:00pm Ren Tsuruga’s landline began to ring. Stalking begrudgingly over, he almost put down the receiver as soon as he had picked it up when he heard the voice on the other end of the line.

 

“Ren my boy, don’t cut me off this time. It’s important.”

 

Ren sighed.

 

“Listen to me, my son. I know we don’t get on these days, but I think you forget that I do truly have your best interests at heart. Who was it who smuggled you all the way from darkest Russia to an unfindeable crook in the depths of France? Who forged you a new identity? Faked your veterinary license? I’ve done a lot for you in this life, but what I’m about to do for you might be the most significant.”

 

Ren paused.

 

“Go on.”

“Ren. Tina knows where you are. She’s probably descending on Eugnes as we speak. Grab your gun and run, my boy. Run for your life.”

 

The phone clicked off dead. Ren stood inanimate for a few seconds before rushing to the bathroom. He fished methodically under the sink to retrieve the set of scales and then carefully prised off the upper panel. In the hollow space between the scales and the foot platforms nestled an old revolver. Grabbing this, he checked the cylinder for bullets (there were six, good) and hastily pocketed it. He then put on two jumpers, a trench coat, and his snow boots and ran straight out of the front door. His heart hammered as he crunched quickly around the ridge and into the sleeping vineyards.

 

She’d found him.                                

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 10:46am, Kyoko Mogami noticed that the leather binding on her right arm was slightly loose. She looked furtively around in the dark room. It was silly; she knew she was alone.

Cautiously, intensely aware of the repercussions of her timing being wrong, she began to squeeze her wrist free. Millimetre by painful millimeter leather rubbed against skin as her hand began to emerge from the restraints.

When both hands were finally free twenty minutes later, Kyoko’s adrenaline levels were through the roof. For the first time in nearly a month she had total mobility. For the first time in nearly a month, there was a chance that perhaps she could be free.

 

She stood up and paced the room, solely to enjoy the feeling of walking at will once more. Then she stopped.

She couldn’t celebrate too soon. She needed to actually get out of here.

Walking forwards to the door, she put out her fingers and felt the hard parameters of the doorframe and the handle. The latter she tried to turn; it wouldn’t budge. A sense of desperation growing, she slammed against the door with her fists. It remained firm. Fists threatening to bruise and acutely aware that time was running out before Reino would be paying her a lunchtime visit, she held back tears and tried to rationalise.

 

How else could she get out? She’d tried the only door already. Were there any windows?

 

Her eyes lit up in a brief moment of emotional respite. She practically leaped up the stairs to the bathroom and almost fell into ecstasy as she pushed open a small circular window.

 

Suddenly the cold air came rushing in. Kyoko, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, couldn’t help but shiver. She looked down. It was a long drop from here. She would be falling directly into snow, too, which would probably kill her of hypothermia far before anything else.

Kyoko looked back at the tiled bathroom behind her. She looked left at her bruised, shivering arms and silken nightie. She looked down at the snow below…                   and leaped.

 

**Crunch.                                Thud.**

With the sound of a crumpled paper bag and indescribable amounts of pain, Kyoko landed in a bed of snow. She staggered to her feet and looked up, to see that she had jumped from the attic of the sky blue windmill that she had once so adored. Its pastel blue plaster was now cruelly dismal in the landscape of white, as if mocking the girl who was now slowly freezing to death.

 

_‘No, I need to keep moving. Keep moving.’_

She began to make her way to the path down the hill when she was halted in her tracks by a deep, low growl.

 

_‘Shit. Holey.’_

Suddenly the black behemoth was upon her. Sharp teeth glinting and beady obsidian eyes remorseless, it hunted her down as she sprinted down the steep slopes of the ridge. Her bare feet slapped the frozen ground as her legs pumped without thought, desperately ignoring the tearing of brambles and thorns at her skin and clothes as she tumbled over roots and bushes.

And then she slipped. One foot, already bleeding red into the snow and numb with pain, missed the footing on a slippery frozen root. She was thrown inhumanly fast through briars and nettles, quickly outpacing her canine pursuer but sustaining more injuries than she had ever had the misfortune of imagining.

 

Finally, she came to a standstill in a tangle of frozen limbs on the edge of a vineyard. Her entire body pulsed and ached, and her eyelids were heavy enough to drag her to the bottom of the abyss of eternal sleep.

Laying still, Kyoko felt her pulse slow and her eyes close. The world was becoming so cold now, so distant.

 

She was wrenched from her paddle in the pool of eternal repose by a familiar voice.

 

“Miss Mogami?”

 

On the 20th of December, 2016 at 12:11pm, Ren Tsuruga encountered Kyoko Mogami’s half-dead form on the edge of a frozen vineyard.


	14. Home

 

 

# Home

On the 20th of December 2016 at 11:43am , Kanae Kotonami was getting the groceries. The faint winter light that filtered into the dim store made her face appear pale, more gaunt than before. She had developed ever-present dark circles under her eyes, and her lips were chapped from the nervous habit of biting them.

 

“That’ll be € 6.75 please,” said Reino from behind the counter, distracting her from a chip in one of her nails that she had been worrying at.

“Here.” she placed the correct shrapnel into his palm and collected a scribbled receipt “D’you order the tools from Tronsanges?”

“Aye” Reino pointed languidly behind him “One of yer siblings paid the rest off. You can collect it if ye want”

 

Kanae hoisted her bag up onto her shoulder and shuffled behind the counter and through a thin corridor to the back.

 

There, palely illuminated by the wan light of the open back door, the smooth contours of a wooden handle rested heavily against a coat rack. A shock of metal glinted from under a pair of green wellies. Kanae leaned down and picked up the axe.  She was grateful for its heft as she stood there, squished between a pile of coats and the cold draft of the outside world. It was nice to have something so heavy in the palms of her hands. She could be sure that it would do its duty. That it could never leave her side.

With a certainty that she had not felt for months, she pushed open the creaky wooden door and stepped into the cold of the winter’s day.

 

Crunching slowly through the light snow, she made her way to the town square and began loading her shopping onto the milk float when a familiar brunet caught her eye.

 

“Kanae!”

“Yu-” (oh, she hated how she jumbled her words around him) “Yukihito! What’re you, um, what’re you doin’?”

 

He finished buttoning his long woolen coat and patted some stray snowflakes off his case. His cheeks were a charming shade of blush in the cold weather, a detail that Kanae couldn’t help but fixate on as their breaths formed billowing clouds before them. Despite the abundant layers of insulation on her adequately heated body, she felt her own cheeks begin to warm as well.

 

“Vet’s closed because of the snow disruption. Mind if I tag along with you on the ride home?”

“Sure” she tried to tuck a few stray hairs behind her ear as nonchalantly as possible “If that’s okay with you”

 

They clambered onto the unergonomic frame, and with a rumble and a whine, they set off, vibrating violently on the cobblestones of the square until they hit the smooth dirt of the road out of town.

 

Kanae couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious with Yashiro behind her. She knew that his position crouching beside a dozen or so rattling empty milk bottles was probably quite distracting, but just the thought of him noticing her unkempt hair and hand-me-down coat was positively mortifying. Was he disappointed that she hadn’t brushed her hair? Was he as happy to see her as she was him?

 

As it turned out, Yashiro’s mind was quite on other things. In between holding on for dear life and attempting to secure some of the convulsing cargo, he was trying to wipe his steamed-up glasses and identify the blurry figure that was standing further up the road. After he had bent his left elbow nearly backwards in order to clean the spectacles with a corner of his coat, he put them back on and blinked in new-found clarity.

 

“Kanae!” he shouted over the whistling engine “Stop!”

 

She dutifully slammed her foot on the brakes, nearly tipping the fragile vehicle as it jerked to a halt.

 

“What is it?”

 

He pointed to the woman hovering on the doorstep of a nearby farmhouse.

 

“Mrs. Berger looks like she wants a word”

 

Yashiro clambered out of the milk crate that he had been occupying and helped his companion push the float to the roadside.

 

Once they had reached the door, Mrs. Berger greeted them in an even wobblier manner than usual. Her jittery, shuddering nervousness was amplifying the unstable base of her prosthetic leg, leaving her erratically vibrating form in quite a state.

 

“Ah’ve been trying to contact ye fer the longest tyme! Ooh, ye must come inside, the both of ye. Come on in”

 

Kanae exchanged a concerned look with Yashiro. He turned the edges of his lips up ever so slightly and put a gloved hand on her shoulder. She nodded. They stepped in.

 

After having removed their snowy shoes in the hallway and forced their stiff, frozen hands to undo the buttons of their coats, the trio made their way up the stairs. Though the central heating was on full blast, there was something in Mrs. Berger’s gravity as she clunked her way up each step that sent shivers down Kanae’s spine.

 

The scene that greeted her at the peak was like a tableau. Pierre Berger, suddenly frail, stood with his head hung low. The pale blue midday light threw his shadow as a twisting river between paper ridges and valleys. The crinkled landscape of hundreds of crumpled letters covered the worn wooden flooring.

 

There was silence. Kanae reached down and unfurled a ball of writing the size of a large apple. Her eyes hesitantly scanned the page as a hand came to her mouth in shock.

 

“One hundred and thirty three” said Pierre Berger into the still air.

 

Yashiro looked up in confusion.

 

“Pardon?”

“One hundred and thirty three. There are one hundred and thirty three letters in total.”

 

His face paled. He brought a hand to his temples.

 

“Jesus christ”

 

He turned his head ever so slightly to catch a glance of the girl standing next to him. She was quivering from head to toe. A frenetic, tense vibration was shaking her to her very core. In her hands, she clutched one of the later, handwritten letters, and what seemed to be a receipt.

 

Her eyes snapped up to meet his. With the burning ferocity of a conscience on fire, she marched wordlessly past him.

 

“Kanae?”

 

Coming to his senses, he kicked a pile of mail away and tumbled down the steep stairs after her. Skidding around a floor lamp on the corner of the corridor, he rushed frantically to keep up with her broad strides.

 

“Kanae!”

 

She whipped around from the half open door to meet his gaze. In the infinitely short, painful moment that their eyes met, his heart sank, her brown eyes sang a melody of outrage, and the air was alive with the blazing inferno that her heart had set. And then, with a cold grimace, she picked up the axe from the umbrella stand and ran out into the cold.

 

*******

 

On the 20th of December, 2016 at 12:11pm, Ren Tsuruga was feverishly pulling his coat off. Ignoring the sounds of weighted van doors slamming in the village behind him, he began to carefully wrap the frail figure beneath him in it.

 

He was perfectly aware, as he wrenched another layer from his body, that the heavy footsteps approaching in the snow were coming for him.  Quite certain, as he whispered a hushed “Everything’s alright. You’re safe” into the freezing air, that the twenty black rifles around him were aimed directly at his heart. Still, with the cold seeping into his bones and time running out, he gently picked up the somnolent Kyoko Mogami and hugged her to his chest.

 

An automatic rifle clicked, the cool, smooth barrel pressed against his forward. He looked up and faintly smiled.

 

On the 20th of December 2016 at 12:17pm, Ren Tsuruga peacefully surrendered to Tina Krovopuskov’s forces.

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 3:15pm, Kyoko Mogami became aware that she had been asleep. Furthermore, she noticed that she was apparently under a blanket, and that she was also sat down on a metallic bench.

 

She spent a few seconds soaking in the olive tweed gently covering her eyes and feeling the soft fabric’s weave under her hands. It was warm and soft, and smelled faintly of lavender. A pleasant and drowsy feeling overcame her. Raising unrestrained hands to the edge of the fabric over her head, she could easily imagine that she was free. She had taken the risk, but here she was, home at last, in peace and in quiet.

 

 She lurched involuntarily forwards, the blanket flying away as the ground beneath her seemed to shake and swerve.

 

As light flooded into her vision, she realized that the covering that had just fallen off of her shoulders was in fact a vast winter coat, and that she was sat across from one Ren Tsuruga. His enormous frame was curled in on itself, and for the first time the tallest man that she’d ever met seemed frighteningly small.

 

Unthinking, she delicately reached a bare arm into the infinitesimal distance between the two of them. A small, bruised hand bridged the silent void that kept them barely a foot apart.

 

“Ren?” the word, barely audible over the strange hum of their surroundings, felt strange in her mouth. “Ren?”

 

He slowly looked up, face overcast. His brown eyes searched her face, and then meandered as he took in the entirety of her form. She was small, fragile. Her body, only just covered by several jumpers many sizes too big for her, was a pale patchwork of bruises and scratches. And now she was here, with him, in the back of a van being driven by a Russian mafia boss to god knew where, and it was all his fault.

 

He felt his face begin to crumple inwards as his head sank into his hands. Kyoko, caught between his rapidly spreading anguish and the ludicrous instinct to cover her bare legs, leaned forward to pick up his coat.

 

Just then, as tears of confusion and frustration had begun to well in her eyes, the van swerved violently. Kyoko was thrown forwards, and in an immediate reflex on her co-passenger’s part, caught up in Ren’s sturdy arms.

 

After a few seconds of initial shock, the two of them turned to face each other. For the first time, their eyes truly met, and Kyoko felt an immediate calm wash over her. His arms were warm, and from this close she could hear the faint beating of his heart. She felt safe.

 

 The road was smooth. The neon light over their head flickered. Ren stirred.

 

“I’m sorry”

 

Kyoko looked up. Their faces were close. She gazed at his crumpled shirt collar, then at her scratched knees, and remembered that she still didn’t know where she was, or why she was with him.

 

“Why?”

“Kyoko-” He paused, and began to unwrap his arms from around her “May I call you Kyoko?”

 

She reflected on this. She was trapped in the back of a van with a man she barely knew, going to an unknown and potentially dangerous location. She had been tortured and living in captivity for most of a month. There was probably a missing persons report out for her already. She stifled a bitter laugh. What did social conventions matter to her now?

 

“I suppose you can, yes”

“Kyoko,” he said slowly, softly lifting her from his lap and placing her on the bench next to him, “I’m not… who I said I was”

 

She smirked sarcastically.

 

“It’s not like you told me a whole lot about yourself anyway”

“No, what I mean is…”

 

 He sighed. Where was he meant to start? He decided that self-introduction would be the most polite place.

 

“My name isn’t actually Ren Tsuruga”

 

Kyoko, who had previously been watching the dust float about in the dim green light, whipped around.

 

 “My name is Kuon Hizuri”

 

Her jaw dropped. He soldiered on before she could interrupt.

 

“I do believe we’ve met before. At your friend’s hotel, in Paris?”

“But he-” spluttered Kyoko “I mean- You, You were blond-”

 

Her mind was suddenly awash with questions. Why had he never written back, all those years ago? How had a pale blond youth become this dark and intimidating giant? What was going on? Why was it going on?

 

She had already opened her mouth to speak when a pleading look on his behalf silenced her _. ‘Please’_ his eyes begged _‘please let me finish’_.

 

And she did.

 

When he had finished, she leaned her head upon his shoulder. Strangely enough, she could not bring herself to cry for him, or even to utter the usual condolences. Her own suffering had become so much more tangible, more all-consuming to her recently that it was difficult to care for others. Tears had only angered Reino. What good would tears do her now?

 

She rubbed her eyes.

 

"I have two questions for you, _Kuon_ "

 

She took his silence as agreement.

 

"One, what is the date and time?"

 

He took a large and expensive-looking watch off and handed it to her. It was 4:03pm on the 20th of December. She made to hand back the heavy mechanism, but was surprised to find that he would not accept it.

 

"Keep it"

"But I-"

"I won’t be needing it for much longer at this rate, keep it"

 

He picked it out of her hands and used a warm, broad palm to fix it around her left wrist. It was far too large for her, and even at the lowest setting hung off her carpals as a clunky and slightly out-of-place bangle.

 

Kyoko could not understand what had driven this strange act of generosity, but she could appreciate the gesture. Time was no longer a faceless creature that watched her from the dark. It now followed her wherever she went, the gentle tick tick ticking reminding her of every second, every minute that she had the chance to live through. With each rhythmic 6 degree turn of a thin red hand, a thump like a small heartbeat warmed her skin and reminded her that she was still breathing.

 

She ran her fingers over the smooth glass of the clock face and admired the tiny swirls of gold on the metal casing. Her time as a captive had ended. This new time, that ran on and on into a misty future, was hers.

 

She stood up and stretched. They must have been on a motor way, as the travelling had been smooth and quiet for quite some time now. With a determination that she could neither explain nor contain, she looked down at Kuon and asked:

 

“Two, where are we going?”

 

*******

On the 22nd of December 2016 at 7:33pm, Kyoko Mogami was startled by the sudden halt of the van that she was in, and even more surprised when the van’s back doors opened.

 

Only a little metropolitan street light shone in from behind the two menacing figures dressed in black paramilitary gear who were standing in the doorway. The main reason for their menace, it should be noted, was not their minimalistic attire, nor was it the steely gaze mostly concealed by dark balaclavas, rather, it was the presence of two automatic assault rifles, casually slung on their fronts and ready to be used at any second.

 

“Пожалуйста, выйдите первым, сэр”

 

Kyoko looked at Kuon in slight confusion and began to step forwards, but was halted by one of his large hands. He smiled restrainedly at her and stepped slowly onto the tarmac outside. One guard handcuffed him whilst the other kept an eye on Kyoko. The one watching her barked an order, and without warning the metal butt of a rifle came swinging sharply into Kuon’s stomach. He collapsed inelegantly onto one of the guard’s feet, and was then kicked soundly in the head.

 

Kyoko stood inanimate with terror.

 

“Stop- What’re you-!”

 

Some more guards appeared out of nowhere. One dragged the now bleeding man onto his feet and began to shove him out of sight, a rifle shoved neatly between his shoulder blades.

 

“Wait!” cried Kyoko, running to the door, “Please! What’s-”

 

She was cut off by her own guard putting out a hand and bringing his other to his gun. Focusing his piercing eyes on her, he slowly and deliberately clicked the safety off, and then, to emphasise his point, shot a volley of rounds into the ground without ever shifting his gaze.

 

Kyoko stood silently for a few seconds before warily edging backwards. The pair remained fixed in their positions for several minutes, eye contact never breaking, before a crackling voice on the guard’s walkie talkie caught his attention.

 

_“Тина говорит, чтобы привести ее. Любая комната на нижнем этаже в порядке.”_

 

The guard mumbled a curt reply into the receiver and then pointed a gloved hand at Kyoko.

 

“Ну же” he said, motioning for her to come out.

 

Kyoko stepped out onto the asphalt of a car park and felt an unaccountable familiarity. The night was dark but a few well-dressed people were still walking on the far side of the wide, well-paved street. Tall commercial buildings framed the surroundings, the dark of the high-class window displays creating the eerie impression that the faceless mannequins were watching them. Kyoko fought to calm her breathing as she felt a smooth cylinder pressed into the small of her back. No, it couldn’t be. Why would the Russian mafia have chosen-

 

The guard grabbed her by the arm and marched her around the sides of the vehicle, whereupon she was greeted by a sight she had sworn never to see again.

 

Brightly lit and imposingly tall, the Fuwa Grand Hotel loomed into her vision. The clear, modernist glass panels that made up much of its exterior facade glinted razor sharp, the clear white interior highlighting the threatening black personnel occupying every room.

 

As Kyoko walked to the front desk, directed by the offensive weapon in her back, she felt the cold of the night air on her naked legs and wrapped the large green coat around her a little tighter. Her bare feet  felt shamefully rough and dirty as she stepped from the coarse pavement to the smooth and clean white tiles of the lobby. She could already feel the gazes of a hundred unknown men on her, judging, valuing, sizeing-up. Self-consciousness was now overriding all previous notions of confidence. She felt afraid and alone, trapped once more in a place that she had once known as home.

She hadn’t seen Itsuki at the desk, or Sam the bellman at the door. This was not her home. It was a strange, hollowed-out replica of the place that she’d spent most of her life. A wave of nausea washed over her as she remembered the circumstances under which she’d stopped being a resident. She did not want to be here.

 

Marching up to the front desk, now stationed by another man in black paramilitary gear, Kyoko’s guard exchanged a few indecipherable words with the stand-in secretary and was handed a small electronic tablet. Eyeing Kyoko cautiously, he began to type something out, and then presented the screen to her.

 

A translation app was open. Grateful for the introduction of an understandable language, Kyoko quickly scanned the few lines of French:

 

‘My name is Patricius. I will watch you until tomorrow’

 

She nodded quickly, nervously waiting for the next lines.

 

‘We go to kitchen now. You eat.’

 

Kyoko, having not eaten for most of 12 hours now, found comfort in the thought of facing the enemy on a full stomach. From what she had heard from Kuon, she would need it.

 

He put the tablet back on the counter and once more resumed the tight grip that he had had on her arm. They made their way from the smooth tiles of the public area to the soft red carpet of the first corridors, and then to the sticky linoleum of a familiar hidden service staircase. Outside the closed door of the kitchen, the guard made it clear through a series of hand gestures that she had one hour to eat, before promptly shoving her into the kitchen and locking the door behind her.

 

Kyoko looked around into the empty room. She had never seen it so quiet before. Gone were the smells of a hundred gourmet meals cooking at once, the shouts from waiters and understudy cooks, the reddish tinge of the light catching the exotic spices that hung in the air. Taisho and Ookami had gone, and so had all the life of the place.

 

Tentatively removing her coat and a few layers of jumper, she made her way to the small counter in the back corner of the preparation room. Setting aside wistful memories of hot chocolates and striking green eyes, she placed her layers on one of two bamboo stools and began to search the cupboards for anything that she could cook. After having opened nearly every larder, stock and pantry, she noticed a packet of Tricolor pasta at the top of a tall cupboard. It was a little too high up for her to reach unaided, so she grabbed a stool and perched on top of it, angling to reach her fingertips closer to the plastic wrapped prize. With the package agonizingly close but still unreachable, she launched herself onto her tiptoes and beamed with delight as her fingers closed around it. She pulled it out of the cupboard and began to sway as the light chair under her wobbled. Struggling to maintain her balance, she let out an involuntary gasp as she felt her feet leave their perching point and her body tumble down…

 

Into somebody’s arms.

 

“What the fuck?!”

 

Kyoko staggered immediately to her feet and turned to find a familiar blond standing opposite her.

 

“Why the fuck are _you_ here?” she growled defensively, immediately taking a fighter’s stance and wielding the packet of pasta in front of her.

 

“Why am _I_ here? I bloody live here! I don’t know why everyone else got paid leave, but whoever booked the hotel obviously left me out of the equation.”

 

Sho frowned.

 

“I thought you’d gone mi-” his eyes trailed down to her tattered nightie and bruised body. “ _What the fuck_ happened to you?”

 

Kyoko froze.  A thousand memories of countless forced embraces were rushing back into her consciousness. Suddenly she could feel the throbbing pain of every bruise on her body and see in perfect technicolour every reason behind them. The feeling of warm hands running over her body crept back into her being and tears welled in her eyes as her breathing hitched. She could feel herself begin to shake. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to have to remember.

 

“Oh Jesus.” Sho’s eyes widened. “Oh fuck. Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-”

 

He stepped forwards to wrap her in a hug but she shoved him away.

 

“Stay away from me!” she yelled. “Stay the fuck away from me! You’re no better than him”

 

He slipped into confusion.

 

“Him? Who’s ‘him’? But… I- I love you. You love me. Why the hell did you run away?”

 

Kyoko snorted.

 

“Love? You call _that_ love? You must be the most self-centred lover that I’ve ever met. You love me enough to drag me wherever you want and do whatever you want, but asking how I feel? Paying attention? Is that _really_ too much to ask?”

 

“Kyoko, I don’t understand.” He stuttered uncertainly “You always agreed. You were always fine with it”

 

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

 

“You’re telling me, that night before I left, that night we were together, you couldn’t tell even a little bit? That I was uncomfortable? You couldn’t have gathered from literally my _entire_ ‘handsome prince’ fantasy that I didn’t want my first time to be a drunken fling with a semi-conscious man who didn’t care how I felt?”

 

“But you-” Sho was floundering, faced with an opposition more volatile than he had expected. “You went along with it”

“Because I was _scared!_ I was scared because I had never seen you like that before and I was scared because I didn’t want you to stop loving me. How stupid and egotistical _are_ you? ‘No’ fucking means ‘no’, not ‘convince me’.”

 

He brought a hand to his head.

 

“What the fuck? Oh fuck. Oh Jesus Christ.” He looked at a girl that he had meant to love and saw only what he had failed to protect “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry Kyoko I never- I never knew-”

“That’s exactly the problem, Sho!” she was exasperated “You never knew because you never bothered to look! And it hurt me.”

 

He sank his face into his hands.

 

“Fuck, I’m so sorry. I- I never meant to hurt you. I love you Kyoko, I really do”

 

She stood there, incredulous. Her brain was roaring against her skull in confusion. All of her pain, all of her suffering, had been because of the boy standing in front of her. And he _loved_ her? He was _sorry_? How was that meant to make her feel better? How could that change anything now? How could she forgive him after all that he’d put her through?

 

She put down the pasta and began to sob. Sho once more stepped forward to hug her, but this time she did not deny him. She needed the warmth.  

 

 

 

On the 20th of December 2016 at 8:13pm, Kyoko Mogami was eating tricolor farfalle pasta with tinned tomato sauce and grated gruyere. She was sat a healthy distance from Sho Fuwa, who was also eating pasta in silence.

 

For a while, the sound of the faint scraping of forks on plates was the only thing that could be heard. Then Sho broke the silence.

 

“We used to do this all the time” he said, before transporting a forkful of orange bow shapes into his mouth. “ ‘Specially when mum was renovating the place. It was always one of my favourite meals”

 

Kyoko gingerly reached over for more cheese. She replied without looking at him.

 

“I was always down here before you though. Ever wonder why?”

 

He chuckled and took the cheese back from her.

 

“Oh I _know_ why”

“Really?” She glared at him cynically “because I _really_ doubt tha-”

“You were crying” he cut her off.

 

She stared at him in disbelief, half-forgetting to chew her food.

 

“You knew? And you did nothing? _Nothing_?”

 

He put down his cutlery and turned to look at her, resting his head on one palm.

 

“I thought it would be a bit rich for an orphan to be consoled by the inheriting son of a massive corporation”

 

Kyoko picked up her plate and walked to the sink, refusing to look at him. Turning on the tap, she started to wash the dishes in silence.

 

“Kyoko…”

 

No reply came over the sound of running water.

 

“Kyoko?”

 

She snapped. Dropping the ceramic and metal noisily into the sink, she rounded on him in fury.

 

“Are you some sort of _moron_?” she began “Don’t you know that communication is the key to any good relationship? Did you never think it would be a good idea to, you know, talk things out?”

 

Sho opened his mouth to yell something back but was immediately silenced by Kyoko clamping her hands over it. She put a finger to her lips and cocked her head to the door from the service stairwell.

 

Footsteps were approaching.

 

_‘ohmygodohmygodohmygodthey’regoingtokillmeandthisstupidbrataswellohmygodohmygod-’_

Suddenly, with a loud crash and the sound of groaning metal, the door was kicked in. Patricius the guard swiftly made his way to the two teens locked in an altercation and promptly made his intentions clear by pointing the barrel of his assault rifle directly in between Sho’s eyes.

 

Straining slightly, Kyoko stepped back and raised her arms in the air. From where she was standing, she could just about make out a second figure standing in the doorway.

 

“You there, boy. I do not remember inviting you. Get out before I have my man gut you.” The voice was feminine, and had a strong Russian drawl.

 

Sho looked nervously at Kyoko and began to stand up straight.

 

“Do not worry, my man will escort you off of the premises.”

 

Her childhood friend was duly marched off with a gun to his back, leaving Kyoko quite alone with the mysterious figure.

 

“Kyoko, is it not?” came the voice from the doorway “ I have heard much about you”

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 9:22pm, Kyoko Mogami was sat on a king-size bed in a fluffy bathrobe and having her hair brushed by the leader of one of Russia’s most formidable gangs. Quite why this was happening was rather beyond her, as she had early noticed that the older woman’s hair was far longer than her own.

 

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable aspect of Tina Krovopuskov’s appearance was her abundance of hair. It flowed in blonde cascades to far below her waistline, effortlessly tumbling in nebulous waves onto the white sheets of the hotel bed.

Striking, too, were the hands that held the comb. They were that pale shade of purple so often associated with an early dawn, and were covered with strange, maroon branches that played across the skin. These russet lines extended across all visible parts of her body, and in particular her face, where they manifested as a mass of raised interlinking scar tissue.

It was not in spite of these physical defects that Tina was beautiful, nor really because. The true reason for her arresting elegance and breath-catching brilliance was the strange, intangible aura of confidence that she exuded with every waking moment. Every blink, every breath, every movement seemed to be perfectly calibrated to accentuate her perfectly straight back and the gentle flutter of her unevenly burned eyelashes.

 

“Little girl” she said, laying down her hairbrush “You are wondering why you are here”

 

Kyoko was too petrified to reply, or even to turn around.

 

“It is unfortunate that you are here to suffer. My men tell me that you have been through a lot already”

 

Kyoko hugged her knees to her chest and began to rock gently back and forth. She didn’t want to begin to remember now. Not again. Not after all that had been done to her.

 

“This butcher’s boy… He was, how do you say, a nice lad?”

“Please…” It came out as a whisper.

“I am sorry? I do not understand?”

“Please stop”

 

Tina shifted gracefully off of the bed and sat down at an ornate vanity.

 

“Ah,” she said, picking up a pot of face cream “But I cannot. You are a late addition to my plans, but you are important. Do you know what I want, little girl?”

 

Kyoko shook her head meekly.

 

“I want that man to feel the same excruciating pain that I felt on the day that I became… _This_. I want him to understand the feeling of having a loved one wrenched from your life. I want his heart to break forever. And for that-” she said, smoothing out her moisturizer “I will need you to suffer. I do not know how you became the man’s weakness, but I also do not care. I would have my men do ten times worse to you than your trifling butcher’s boy if only to make him suffer a tenth of what I have felt every day since then.”

 

Kyoko stood up. Her hands were balled into tight fists, shaking with anger.

 

“Ah, I do not expect you to understand. It is not your fault. It cannot be helped.”

“But it can” whispered Kyoko quietly “It can be helped. Every minute, every second, somebody loses a loved one. Not all of them go on to be a psychotic freak like you. And where is your compassion? As a woman? As someone who knows what I have been through? Have you no heart at all, to not see that we can’t look back in anger?”

 

“Enough!”

 

Tina slammed a hand mirror onto the dresser with such force that it shattered.

 

“Little girl, you know nothing. For four years all of my thoughts have been about these moments, this revenge. There is no turning back now. Tomorrow I will hold a ball. We will drink, and we will dance. And then you and Kuon will die.”

 

She glided out of the room, silken diaphanous nightgown fluttering behind her light steps. With the sure click of a well-known lock, Kyoko found herself alone once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have many things to say:
> 
> First, I want to make it absolutely clear that Sho was definitely 100% in the wrong. That what he did was rape. That apologising can't fix what he's done. You may form your own conclusions as to the growth and understanding of my interpretation of his character in the comments (in fact, please do), but I would like to assert that lack of malice doesn't make what he's done any better. I always have seen him as an egotistical jerk.
> 
> Secondly, I will not be able to update this fic for quite some time, AT LEAST one month, as my work is entering a crucial cycle at this point in my life and I really don't think that I'll have the time. That's not to say that I'm not dedicated! We only have one chapter left to go, and I do look forward to sharing the finale with you. As always, thank you for your support!
> 
> Thirdly, a lot of this is based on my own experience in small town France. I won't go into the details, but Kanae's milk float is very much based on a real event, a fever-dream-like moment in which I realised that the local small-town emos had hijacked and painted flames onto a milk float in an attempt to make cool engine revving noises. You will be unsurprised to know that it instead made whiny vibrations. Ah, what larks, eh? 
> 
> Thanks again!


	15. Danse Macabre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning!! - violence

  **Danse Macabre**

 

On the 21st of Decemeber 2016 at 9:05am, Kyoko Mogami awoke in the dark. The soft and altogether pleasing weight of a thick goose feather duvet enveloped her in warmth, and there was a faint smell of lavender in the air. Rolling over on the unnecessarily wide bed, she stretched her arms and was surprised when she bumped into a solid obstacle. Cautiously reaching a hand out towards it, she determined that it was heavy and faintly warm.

 Drawing back once more and sitting up, her mind began to race. She had watched enough mafia films to already fear the seemingly plausible presence of a horse’s head on the pillow next to her, and was trying desperately to not let some of the worse cinematically suggested scenarios dominate her inner monologue.

 

She sat upright, not daring to move, and waited for her eyes to adjust. She quickly realised that the silhouette at her side was too long to be a decapitated steed, allowing her more sinister theories to take centre stage.

 

Her most immediate thought, strangely enough, was that it could be Sho. She felt that it was entirely possible for Tina to recklessly murder one of Europe’s most popular singers in order to taunt her and vaguely assert her dominance in this situation.  She _then_ thought that perhaps her thoughts about the sudden death of her childhood friend could in fact be some strange from of subconscious wish-fulfillment, and proceeded to grapple with the question of the morality of wishing someone dead, before finally concluding that her desire to see Sho come to a grisly end was not only by now fully conscious, but also morally defendable.

 

Leaning down to the figure’s head, she ascertained with mild disappointment that it was not the subject of her killing intent. No, the face seemed slightly too swollen, and the chin a little too sharp. Leaning even closer, so that her nose was almost touching the obscured form of a sharp cheekbone, she squinted and took note of an arrestingly pale shock of blonde hair, and of the faint and warm ebbs of regular breaths.

 

So he was alive.

 

She made to scuttle away from the somnolent mass, but in doing so caught a slender ankle in a twist of bedspread, and was sent sprawling onto the body laid beside her by the momentum of her own backwards movements.

 

Frantically pushing herself up and internally panic-cursing, Kyoko was caught off-guard by quiet mumbling. The man brought a hand to his forehead and blearily opened his eyes, meeting hers.

 

“Kyo- Miss Mogami?”

 

Her golden eyes blazed into his green ones not with anger but with intense confusion.

 

It was Ren, but… well, it wasn’t.

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 1:02pm, Kanae Kotonami was breaking the law. After having smashed the front door of the grocery store to wooden smithereens with a single blow of her shiny new axe, she had had screamed Reino into submission at axepoint, and was presently tying him up.

Yashiro watched with deep distaste, flanked by Pierre Berger, and readjusted his glasses.

 

“Should we call the police?” he asked.

 

Reino chuckled, eliciting a low growl and several deep kicks in the stomach from Kanae. She had to be forcibly dragged away from the gasping and moaning teen by Yashiro before she accidentally committed manslaughter.

 

“I don’t know yet” she finally replied, breathing hard from the violence that she had exerted.

 

“I wouldn’t”

 

They looked down to the hog-tied teen on the floor. Barely concealing the hatred in their eyes, they let him continue.

 

 “I’m the only one who knows ‘ow you can find’her, and, well, if ye lock me up…”

“Bastard!” cried Kanae, kicking him once more “Tell us, tell us where she is you sick, sick freak!”

 

Yashiro tightened his grip on her arm and pursed his lips.

 

“Tell us where she is” he said.

 

Reino curled around and sat up.

 

“I ‘aven’t got her anymore.”

“What d’you mean you hav-”

“I mean I think I could work it out, but you’d have to listen to me”

 

Yashiro released his grip on Kanae’s arms and pushed his glasses up his nose. The glint from the overhead lights on the glass lenses seemed for an instant razor sharp.

 

“Why should we trust you?”

“Aw come on man!” Reino mockingly pouted “I only wanna wangle a reduced sentence, aiding the course ‘o justice an’ all that”

 

Kanae hesitated before lifting him up.

 

“What’s our first move?”

“She still logged onto yer surgery computer?”

 

She looked to Yashiro, who nodded, and began to make her way to the veterinarian’s across the street, restrained teen in tow.

 

*******

“Is this, um, what you really look like?”

 

On the 21st of December 2016 at 9:09am, Kyoko Mogami was sat on a double bed next to Kuon Hizuri. She was asking the important questions first.

 

She had switched on a bedside lamp and was examining his blonde locks of hair as he leaned, tired, against the headboard.

 

He barely stirred as he replied in the affirmative, shutting his eyes and resting an expansive palm on his lap.

 

Kyoko stared at him, comfortable in the knowledge that he could not see her eyes wondering his face.  His left cheek was strangely swollen, as though a small mole hill had settled on his zygomatic bone, and was spread with a patchwork nebula of red and dark purple. The shallow pink train tracks of a parallel set of scratches ran from just above his right eyebrow to where his double eyelid formed a crease, and his lip seemed to be split. She took all this in, and could not deny that he was beautiful.

She blushed slightly at thought. She realised that she had probably always been innately drawn to his good looks, but to acknowledge it felt so… bold. Allowing herself to find someone attractive once again was liberating beyond what she could have imagined, and she silently reveled in her new-found confidence.

 

She shifted her gaze from her distractingly handsome companion to what she could make of the rest of the room in the faint warm glow of the lamp. Examining the position of the bed, the thick fluffy duvet and the cut of the glass in the chandelier hanging in the further end of the room, she ascertained that they must have been in one of the pricier suites. She had never really been allowed in these rooms when she had lived here, being confined to her smaller room near the ground floor except for odd cleaning jobs. Pushing herself lightly off the bed and wrapping herself in a silk dressing gown that had been faultlessly folded on a set of drawers, she began to explore the room and reabsorb the little details that she had forgotten in her time away.

 

Grandiose gilded rococo furniture lined the walls, leaving the centre of the enormous room empty apart from a tiger-skin carpet. Its glass eyes seemed to swim with some inexpressible emotion as the light caught the spheres’ black centre, and its yellowing teeth had been dulled by an old craftsman with some fine sandpaper, lending it a pathetic, sanitised air. Kyoko crouched to look into its cavernous mouth. Tigers seemed so small when they were laid flat.

 

“Tasteless, isn’t it?”

 

She looked up to see that Ren, no, _Kuon_ , was now properly awake and sitting cross-legged on his pillow.

 

“That the poor creature had to die in order to become such a vulgar display of wealth is one of life’s many tragedies”

“Yes,” she said, standing up, “It is”

 

He slipped off of the bed and joined her in the centre of the room. She noticed that his silk pyjamas matched hers.

 

“Have you any idea what time it is?” he simply asked, ruffling his golden hair in such a way that Kyoko couldn’t _help_ but stare.

 

She made to look at her wrist, but realised that the heavy watch was no longer hanging on it. Tina had taken it off her before their rather awkward bath together.

 

Panicking slightly, she strode over to the piles of clothes that had been left on the imposingly ornate drawers and was relieved to find it resting on top.

 

“9:13” she said.

 

He yawned and when his mouth closed his brow was set with something closely resembling worry.

 

“What do we do now?”

“For one,” she said, striding away “We open the curtains”

 

The room filled with a dim grey light that was not as immediately assaulting to the eyes as one would have expected. The brightness revealed a delicate tea trolley laden with a tea set and a few morning pastries, as well as a neatly printed embossed card on a dresser and the door to an en-suite bathroom.

 

Whilst Kyoko made a bee-line to the golden croissants, Kuon examined the card.

 

It was written in Russian, so he haltingly read a translation.

 

“You will be escorted at one p.m. You will eat breakfast and you will be dressed. If you are feeling-” he stopped, searching for the right word “Cloudy? Um, heavy-headed? It is because we drugged you during the room change. Tina Krovopuskov”

 

“I guess that settles things pretty conclusively” said Kyoko, wheeling over their breakfast.

“Yes” replied Kuon, sighing and putting down the card.

 

He watched in silence as she poured him a cup of tea and handed him a pain au chocolat. He stared at the plate in his lap, unmoving, for quite some time, before turning.

 

“Kyoko-” his jade eyes seemed hollow. She looked into them and saw the air of Tartarus “We’re going to die.”

 

She put down her plate. Her stomach had seized up at his words and suddenly she wasn’t that hungry after all. Her skin was cold now. She remembered the past month, and the months before that, and the night that had caused her to end up here. She felt tears well up in her eyes. She didn’t want to die. Not now. Not now that she’d escaped, made it out alive of everything else. Her life had been misery after misery, but she’d always at least had hope. Hope of some better, brighter future. What hope did she have now?

 

“I’m sorry” he whispered, seeing her face drop “I didn’t mean for things to happen this way”

 

She picked up the teapot to pour herself a strong cup of black tea.

 

“I expect that there’s nothing we can do now. We might as well live it up at the hotel’s expense.”

 

He reached forward to grab the milk jug, a familiar glint returning to his eyes.

 

“And here’s to that”

 

Later, they stood side by side brushing their teeth in front of an obnoxiously wide mirror and idly chatted about whatever they liked. There was no use in hiding secrets, now that they were both doomed to die.

 

They continued to talk as they both changed, with Kyoko’s words echoing in the bathroom and Kuon’s words slightly muffled through the door of the main room. She was delighted to find that she had been left a little makeup, and that her dress was modest enough to cover her extensive bruises. It was a slim black evening dress that ran to the floor and fit like a glove. She admired the black lace neck and shoulders, and the way that they covered her discoloured skin, and wondered how Tina had known her dress size.

 

Kuon was still talking. He asked her about her favorite film. When she shouted back that it was disney’s Cinderella, he laughed a little, and she began to try to do up the back of her dress. Argh, why did dressmakers insist on such impractically low zips?

 

“Kyoko?” She heard Kuon call from the other room. She realised that she had stopped talking.

“Yeah, um, I’m just having a little trouble with the zip is all.”

“Would you like some help?”

 

She did her best to locate the infuriatingly small zip one last time in the mirror and then shyly pushed open the bathroom door by just a crack.

 

“Y- yes please”

 

She noticed that he was already immaculately dressed in a black tie suit, with his hair neatly slicked black. She blushed a little. She couldn’t help that he was arrestingly gorgeous.

 

“So you need help with the back, then?” he said, adjusting a cufflink and looking to her.

 

She felt herself turning crimson and stayed behind the door.

 

“If that’s alright”

 

She stepped out. Kuon’s eyes widened imperceptibly.

 

“You look very nice”

 

It was true. The dress neither hugged her figure nor folded excessively. It fell like a sleek satin waterfall to the floor, the smooth hem barely brushing the carpet. Good tailoring, he supposed.

 

He noticed that her steps towards him were slightly wary, and wondered whether it was nervousness or her heels. She stumbled a little on her last step, and he caught her by instinct. My goodness, she was an impressive shade of red.

 

“Is anything the matter?”

“W-well,” she stammered, shuffling out of his grip “I know you’re just being nice to me, but…”

 

She looked away and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

 

“Well, no one’s ever, um, you know, complimented me? On the way I look, so… well, it was a bit of a shock, you know?”

 

Kuon frowned a little in disappointment.

 

“Kyoko, I was being perfectly serious. I know you’ve had some, well, _complicated_ relationships in the past, but I’d like you to know that I’m being honest with you”

“Th-thank you, but, um, it’s not just that…” She tugged a little on the back of her dress “It’s also that it’s a little, well, um, low-cut, I think you might say”

 

It was his turn to blush. As she turned to face away from him, he saw that the dress was open all the way to just about where her knickers started, and her black lace bra was fully exposed. It wasn’t the only thing that was exposed. Purple patches peppered the skin and a few unmistakable kiss marks lay on the back of her neck. He recoiled a little in shock, remembering that she still hadn’t told him what had happened.

He found the slim black zip pull and began to gently tug it upwards. It ran slowly and smoothly up her straight spine, close to the skin. He found the moment strangely intimate.  With a faint clink, it was clear that the back of the dress was fully closed and she turned around to face him.

 

“Kyoko,” he said, staring down into the pools of her honey-orange eyes “What happened to you?”

 

She quietly began to speak.

 

*******

On the 20th of December 2016 at 1:24pm, Yukihito Yashiro, Kanae Kotonami, Pierre Berger and Reino Takagi were crowded around the surgery computer, sifting through Kyoko’s inbox.

 

“See?” said Reino dryly “D’you understand ‘er connections now?”

 

Kanae grunted and kicked him in the shin before returning to the screen.

 

“How is this meant to help us find her?”

“Well, ‘er account’s on gmail, for starters.”

 

She nodded, not turning away from the open email she was reading.

 

“She should have a contacts book attached to the account”

 

Yashiro pointed her to the correct blue icon and she clicked.

 

“Scroll down to F”

 

She did as commanded and gasped when she reached the correct profile.

 

“Surely it’s not _THE_ -“

“Just click on video call. He’ll prob’ly ‘ave the info.”

 

She sought Yashiro’s eyes for confirmation. He simply nodded. She clicked.

 

Three dots and a call icon appeared on the screen as the dialing tone began to ring. Agonisingly long seconds became aeons as it continued to sound, before a brief beep and the screen filled with the pixilated form of a blond teenager.

 

“KYO-” he stopped and squinted in confusion “Who..?”

“WAIT!” cried Kanae, reaching towards the screen, startling her entourage as her voice began to crack “DON’T- don’t click away. Please.”

 

She sniffled a little and Yashiro leaned in so that he was visible on the screen.

 

“We’re friends of Kyoko’s,” he said “We need some help to make sure she’s safe”

 

Sho’s vaguely blurry form leaned in and became clearer, allowing the others to make out a black eye.

 

“I already don’t think she’s safe. I saw her yesterday”

 

Kanae snapped.

 

“You saw her _YESTERDAY_? You _KNEW_ she wasn’t safe? Why haven’t you fucking done something, you absolute fucking _moron_? _Where is she_?”

 

Sho sheepishly looked down and rubbed the back of his head.

 

“She’s at my parents’ hotel. I can’t call the police because they’ve got the entire hotel staff hostage.”

 

Kanae shrieked.

 

“You fucking _coward_. How dare you? How fucking _dare_ you leave my best friend in danger? Did you even think of how scared she must be?”

“Kanae-”

“Shut _up_ , Yukihito, let me _go_. Listen here, you little piece of shit. You’re going to give us all the information you have and we’re going to get her out of there since _you_ evidently can’t.”

 

Sho, who had leaned back from the screen in terror and was now lost once more in obscurity, whimpered slightly.

 

“I’ve already told you everything I know! She’s in my parents’ hotel, the mob are somehow involved… Oh,” he pointed to his black eye and frowned in confusion “and whoever’s got her seriously roughed me up, all ‘cause they wanted to know her dress size.”

 

*******

On the 21st of December 2016 at 1:02pm, Kyoko Mogami and Kuon Hizuri were stood in an elevator, accompanied by an armed guard. Once the glowing number display had reached ‘0’, a small ding sounded and the doors opened with a smooth swoosh.

 

 

Kyoko looked up at Kuon. Kuon looked down at Kyoko. Their eyes met. With a faint smile, Kuon extended a vast hand into the gap between them, where it was taken by Kyoko. She squeezed his hand as they began to make their way to the ballroom, and he squeezed lightly back.

 

Once the doors were opened, it was impossible not to notice the absurd grandeur of the hall. White lilies overflowed from every wall, invading their senses with the pure brilliance of thousands of uniform petals. Broad men in black suits seemed to glimmer in the fractal light that reflected off of six great chandeliers, the heavy silence and overwhelming smell of flowers creating the oneiric effect that they weren’t really there. At the centre of this strange monochrome world, a single figure stood out from the black and white.

Tina stood, champagne glass in hand and scarlet low cut evening dress revealing the mottled scar tissue that ran across her skin, smiling like a cat watching a goldfinch with a broken wing.

 

“Welcome” she said, consonants slurring into each other in that strange Russian way of hers “Come, you must sit down.”

 

They were directed to a long dining table and sat next to each other, far opposite Tina on the other side.

 

“Oh Kuon,” she continued “You have evaded me for so long! Who could have imagined that you’d hidden yourself away with a fake name in a fake vet’s, and so well that even your customers didn’t know where to find you!”

 

Kuon looked down at his hands in his lap.

 

“It was like a miracle when you appeared on that TV screen. A little older. A little wiser. But sad, and surrounded by sheep.”

 

Kyoko began to pour herself a glass of champagne. She had decided that she was going to need it.

 

“You have killed so many, Kuon. Killed so many by not allowing yourself to die. You did not take the bullet. You did not tell me where you were. You have forced me to torture my way through the villages to get to you. So many dead for you, Kuon.”

 

He did not reply. Tina clicked her tongue impatiently.

 

“So quiet! Come, we must have you dance.”

 

She glared at a suit standing near the door. Music filled the hall. Kyoko recognised it vaguely as something that she had played in her middle school music ensemble. Danse Macabre. A strange choice.

 

As sinister violins swept over them, Kuon offered his hand to her and she took it. They walked hand-in-hand to the dance floor, whereupon he placed his hand on her waist, she placed hers on his shoulder, and they began to move together. As they turned around and around, surrounded by white lilies and black suits, their worlds began to spin into one. The upright figures of suited personnel became the stiff, tall pillars of an abandoned castle. The spinning hem of her black dress formed a spiral around them, as if they were slowly becoming consumed by a black hole. The dramatic cascade of cellos in the air rose in a crescendo as Kyoko felt Kuon tip her back. From the corner of her eyes, she could see armed men walking into the room. When Kuon pulled her back to him, she closed her eyes and hugged herself closer, letting herself forget everything but him.

 

When the piece ended, Kuon gently released her and she stepped to his side. She looked around and saw that a perfect circle of soldiers in black had formed around them as they danced.

 

She looked up at Kuon.

 

“I didn’t know that you can dance”

 

He laughed quietly, his eyes bright.

 

“To tell you the truth, neither did I”

 

*******

 

On the 20th of December 2016 at 2:04pm, Kanae Kotonami was desperately tapping numbers into a phone from a list that she had printed of Kyoko’s contacts, in the passenger seat next to one Yukihito Yashiro, who was recklessly speeding north to the motorway.

 

“Kanae, how do you know this guy is going to be able to help us?”

“Trust me,” she said, slamming down the call button “I think he’s the only guy who has the manpower”

 

*******

On the 21st of December 2016 at 1:34pm, Kyoko Mogami was dancing once more. But not with Kuon. She was currently being twirled slightly forcefully by the hulking creature that was Patricius, her armed escort from the previous night.

 

Kuon looked on with mild anxiety, surrounded on both sides by guards who, though it seemed impossible, towered over him. Kyoko tried to meet his eyes as she was aggressively tipped back. Neither of them understood what was happening.

 

Patricius, noticing that she was looking away from him, tightened his grip on her waist until she whimpered in pain. Realising the precariousness of her situation, she turned to face her dance partner. He had a stern, harsh, face, and his nose bore that distinct uncertainty of one that has been broken and then set straight too many times. His deep eye sockets gave his light blue eyes the feeling of being hidden from plain sight, far overshadowed by his heavy brow. It was these cold blue eyes, so pale that they appeared almost white, that were currently boring into hers.

What was he trying to communicate? Glaring wasn’t really the clearest message.

 

She heard the strident click of a revolver over the music and flinched in alarm as she saw Tina steadily aim a gun at her.

 

“It’s nothing personal, you understand, Patricius. Your bullet vest should save you.”

 

Kuon tried desperately to burst forward but was immediately accosted by the men at his sides. Even as they grabbed his arms, he struggled with the pathos of a drowning man.

 

“Kyoko!” he cried, cut off by a wince as his arm was twisted behind his back, “Wait, please stop!”

 

Tina’s thin vermillion lips formed a smile of glee. The twinkle of her jewelry became blades as she made a signal for the guards to form a closed circle around the dancing pair. Classical violins shrieked as the music became faster and harsher. Kyoko found herself being spun without control, the black and white world blurred as the blood red vision of Tina whipped in and out of sight. Russian roulette.

 

Patricius’ grip on her was now so iron tight, and their momentum so great, that she felt herself constrict and fall. She was pressed into this strange man, still staring at her as intensely as the honed sights of a sniper’s gun. His lips moved faintly, and a quiet but garbled noise that sounded a lot like ‘sorry’ met her ears.

 

**Bang.**

She dipped. Rather, Patricius dipped her. Her spine curled like a chrysanthemum petal and she felt the world become heavy as her hair brushed the floor. The kinetic flutter of a bullet passing just centimeters away from her nose ruffled her eyelashes.

 

Mid-second, mid-fall, she saw that the ceiling was coming into view behind Patricius’ cloud pale eyes. They were falling to the ground.

 

The second of the impact, the ear-splitting crunch of the hall’s grand wooden doors being cracked open resounded into the air, followed by the immediate sound of continuous gunfire.

 

She became aware of the pain and the crushing weight of Patricius lying on top of her only a second later. It did not last long. He rolled expertly off of her and grabbed her by the arm as lead rained overhead. Classical music continued to blare as he guided her to behind an ornamental vase and told her to ‘stay put’ before vanishing into the fray.

 

It wasn’t immediately clear what was happening. The deafening mix of Tchaikovsky and gunfire framed a combat between the black suits and a group of glaring colour. Standing on the far end of the table, she made out a tall old man in a pink leopard print puffa jacket and the most visually assaulting sequined dress slacks that she had ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on. And, was that… a snake?

 

The far side of the room was filled by a mishmash of unsavoury characters, each wearing a distinctive and sartorially improbable mix of colours and clothes, and each fighting with increasingly unlikely weapons. Whilst Lory was plowing down suited men with what seemed to be a sub-machine gun, others were wielding flintlock rifles and one had a chainsaw.

 

A sickening squelch and a plume of red brought Kyoko back to reality. She was in danger. And where was Kuon?

 

She scanned the other ornamental vases for him. The fighting seemed to be dying down now, piles of red and black littering the gleaming varnished wood floor. She turned her gaze to the table, and then to the back of the hall. Panic overcame her. Where was he?

 

**Bang.**

Silence immediately fell. She pushed past falling lily boughs to see Kuon stood in a clearing opened by a floor of fallen bodies. His hand was outstretched, pointing down. There was a gun in it. Below him, a lake of red formed as the red woman bled out. She wasn’t moving. A small tunnel had opened between her eyes.

 

The gun fell to the floor with a thud and he turned to look at the gangsters at the back of the room. His shirt was covered in blood.

 

Lory stared at him in disbelief.

 

“Kuon-”

 

The sound of sirens whined into the silence. The cheap Mafiosi looked skittishly to each other and began to run out of the destroyed doors, followed by Patricius,

 

“It’s the fuzz. I’ve got to, my son.”

 

He leaped off the table, picked up Kuon’s gun, and hopped his way over incapacitated Russians to the door. He turned around briefly to give Kuon a disappointed sigh, and then disappeared into the corridor.

 

Kuon fell to his knees, shaking. He looked into the glassy, staring eyes of Tina and brushed a handful of blonde hair, matted with blood, from her forehead. He didn’t know how things had got this bad. He hadn’t meant for any of this.

 

He heard a soft whimper in the silence and saw Kyoko’s small form curled up opposite him. He wanted to go over, to comfort her, but his limbs were stiff from fatigue. He searched helplessly for her eyes, but found that she shrank back from his gaze.

 

She was frightened of him.

 

The funerary lament of the sirens stopped. The slamming of car doors and the rushing of feet. Armed officers flooded the hall.

 

“Sir, put your hands in the air and remain silent.”

 

*******

“And that’s all that you can remember?” asks the woman across the desk.

 

Kyoko nods wearily. She is tired, so tired of the names, dates, times and places. She doesn’t want to have to dissect them all again. She doesn’t understand why this woman is so fixated upon dates and times.

 

“Would you like to submit these recordings as your witness report?” the woman adds, getting up. Her police badge shines in the harsh light of the interrogation room. “You do understand that the dates and times that you have stated will be used in court for the purposes of alibis and may be used as evidence against you?”

 

Kyoko nods twice, sighing. Dates and times. Dates and times. None of the sea of police personnel have asked her whether she is feeling alright, whether she might want a break from her seemingly endless witness interrogation. They have seen her bruises and the way she flinches back from the touch. They should know.

 

They still haven’t told her what they’ve done with Reino, whether they’ve done anything with him at all. They still haven’t told her anything about Kanae, or Yashiro, or Lory… or Kuon.

 

The interrogator indicates that she can stand and gently removes her handcuffs. She leads her quietly out of the door and through corridors, past men standing at photocopy machines and waiting outside other interrogation rooms. They stare as she walks by. She hates being gawked at by complete strangers, hates the feeling of their eyes on her broken skin and their judgment ricocheting quietly through the halls. She doesn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this.

 

“I know it’s been hard for you,” says the interrogator, turning a shoulder to shield her from the eyes of her colleagues “but you’ve got a while free for yourself now before the cases come to court. As long as you keep your ankle monitor on and don’t leave Paris, you should be left well alone.”

 

They reach the glass front doors of the police station. Kyoko sees that the winter night outside is the deep black of coal and pulls her coat around herself a little tighter. She thanks the officers near the door and steps out into the darkness. As she stands there, breath forming clouds in the gentle chatter of a living city’s air, she notices that a fine white lump has landed on her hand, melting almost instantly. It is snowing in Paris.

 

She takes a step down, into the street, and realizes that for the first time in a long time, she is truly alone. Does she like it? At first she cannot tell. She simply listens to the singing of the passing car motors and the crunching of the snow underfoot, watches the glow of the streetlamps grow far and then near. She is alive.

 

“Kyoko”

 

A tall man stands under the street light. His angular face seems cut in two by the harsh light of the street. It is just close enough for her to reach up and hold his cheek in her palm, and gaze longingly into his eyes. She begins to play with his blonde hair as he wraps his hands around her in a tight embrace.

 

“Happy Birthday”

 

She arches her heels above the ground so that her face is level with his and kisses him quickly and gently.

 

“I love you”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so that's the end of my first fic! Feels strange.  
> I've learned many things over the course of this exercise, the first being that writing doesn't come naturally to me. I think I'll write something easy after this, like maybe a vampire fic. 
> 
> I want desperately to tell you so much about this story, the fine details and the little symbols, but what I want even more is for you to tell me about this story. Whether you liked it, what you thought of the characters, how much of it you were able to piece together before I told you...
> 
> Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I know that it was slow at the start, but a lot's happened in the end, hasn't it?


	16. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't meant to happen but the folks over on ff wanted a few loose threads tied up. Enjoy, I guess.

**Epilogue**

The evening is warm and bright as Kyoko sits on the balcony; the breeze only gently disturbs the trees that line the Paris street and send dappled circles of light dancing across the pavement many floors below. Sunlight plays across her face, now freckled and tanned by the three summers that have passed since that unlikely December. She is smiling as she watches the scenery shift in that hectic way that all big cities do, and talks into a pink flip phone.

 

“It was so incredible! I mean, I know that it’s only a bit part, but it should give me a chance in bigger productions”

“Oh, don’t talk yerself down, Kyokes,” Kanae’s voice crackles through the phone “I’m sure you’ll be scouted for Broadway soon”

 

Kyoko laughs.

 

“Kanae, there isn’t a Broadway in Paris!”

 

With low chuckles and a faint air of embarrassment, the line stops being silent.

 

“You knew what I was tryna say!”

“I doooo, I was just teasing. Anyway, even if the pay isn’t great, I’m really enjoying myself.”

“Oh,” replies Kanae, voice increasingly snarky “I bet you’re having a _grand_ old time with Re- I mean Kuon”

“Kanae!” Kyoko is absolutely scandalised “You know that’s not what I meant!”

“Oh is it _not_ , now?”

“Look, where are you at with Yukihito, anyway?”

 

A deep sigh makes its way through the air, frizzling with the disturbance of the remote country on the other end.

 

“Ever since he got that new job, I don’t have a reason to drive ‘im anywhere. It’s a total pain.”

“What’s he even doing? It better be worthwhile for him to be neglecting you so, otherwise I won’t forgive him!” Kyoko exclaims with enthusiasm.

“Secretary again, can you believe it? He has to travel to Tronsanges every morning, it’s honestly tragic”

 

Kyoko lets her mind wander to the wonderful smell of the bakery across the street as her friend rambles on and on in frustration. When the stream of frustration over unnoticed love from the other end of the line has petered out, she pipes up, remembering something suddenly.

 

“Oh! You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.”

“Wot? Who?”

“Lory. Cheapskate still wanted to know if you were going to pay him for the, uh, favour you asked him for, back- back in…”

 

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence for her friend to understand. 2016 is still a sore point for Kyoko, and Kanae knows not to press matters too much, even though she does have some heavier questions in reserve that she’s been waiting to throw out.

 

“Kyokes, you’ve been reading the papers right? You know about the whole situation with your, uh…”

 

Kanae is searching for the right word, but thankfully Kyoko already knows what she is referring to.

 

“Sho? Yeah. I don’t know, maybe I should have seen it coming.”

 

Sho Fuwa’s face has been plastered all over the front pages of the newspapers since last week, when a group of actresses that had played in his MVs publicly accused him of sexual assault. Her stomach plunges at only the thought of him. Perhaps, if she’d told the press her history with him, those actresses could have been saved the fear and humiliation…

 

“You did what you could, Kyokes,” comes the voice from the other side “It’s not your fault that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring it to court.”

 

A brief pause.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Kyoko’s one comfort, in relation to that extraordinary case, is the thought of Reino well behind bars. For another 73 years. At least.

 

She squints slightly and leans forward over the balcony railing as an improbably tall figure rounds the street corner. She grins.

 

“Hey, he’s coming back, I’m going to have to hang up soon”

“Ugh, lover boy’s back from afternoon lectures already? Can’t wait for ‘im to finally get himself that bloody doctor’s license so I can ‘ave you all to myself during the day.”

“Don’t say that! He’s-”

“Yeah yeah. Text you tonight then.”

 

The line goes dead just as Kuon disappears into the apartment block’s front doors below. She smiles, puts down the phone and rests her head lazily on the table before her. Her eyes are closed but she knows exactly who is it when the apartment door clicks open a minute later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**A/N:** **My vampire fic is now solidly cemented in my mind. It’s going to be a mix of theology, drama, and comedy (oh, and romance, obviously), and it’ll be called “A Tame Vampire” whenever it pops up. Please look out for it! I know that this fic has been very self-indulgent and unnecessarily complex, and so not a great crowd-pleaser, but I’ll be trying my best from now on.**

 


End file.
